Know what the loan really costs.
A teacher shares a loan offer and their payslip. The system works out what the loan actually costs — the effective rate, not the advertised flat one — and whether the repayments would take them past the one-third rule on take-home pay. The financial education is attached to that moment, rather than delivered months away from any real decision.
“This loan says 12%. What will it actually cost me, and can I afford it?”
A flat rate is charged on the whole amount borrowed for the whole term, even as the balance falls. The effective rate is what you are really paying — and it is the only number that lets you compare two offers fairly.
The problem
Teachers are among the most heavily lent-to workers in Kenya, largely because a salaried payslip makes deductions easy to collect. The lending is not the problem. Deciding without being able to see the real cost is.
Loans are commonly quoted at a flat rate, which sounds far cheaper than it is. A 12% flat rate over a year is not 12% — because you are charged on the full amount borrowed even as you pay it down. Most borrowers have no practical way to compare two offers.
School fees, a funeral, a medical bill. The offer is in front of you now, and working out the true cost is exactly the thing there is no time for.
Each lender sees their own loan. Nobody sees the whole payslip. It is entirely possible to be approved for a loan that leaves you below what the law says you must take home.
Generic financial-literacy material is delivered months away from any actual decision, so almost none of it is recalled at the moment it would matter.
The solution
The way in is a loan analyser rather than a course. Somebody with an offer in front of them has a reason to engage right now, and that is the only moment when an explanation of effective rates will actually land.
From that starting point the platform can teach — budgeting, debt, the mechanics of how salary deductions work — attached to figures the person recognises as their own rather than worked examples about somebody else.
It is education, not financial advice. The system shows what a loan costs and what the law says about deductions. It does not tell anyone what to sign.
What it changes
The effective rate is calculated and set against the advertised flat rate, so two offers can be compared honestly rather than by which sounds smaller.
Kenyan law limits how much of a salary can be taken in deductions. The analysis flags when a loan would push take-home pay past that line — before it is signed rather than after.
The explanation of flat versus effective rates arrives while someone is looking at their own numbers. That is when it is remembered.
Designed for WhatsApp and USSD as well as the web, so it works on the phone a teacher already carries.
What it runs on
API
.NET 10, ASP.NET Core, HotChocolate GraphQL
Data
PostgreSQL 16 + pgvector, EF Core 10
Cache
Redis 7
Design
Clean Architecture with CQRS (MediatR)
Web
Next.js 15 (a later phase)
Channels
WhatsApp and USSD workers (a later phase)
Related
The same idea applied to law — expert help delivered over WhatsApp.
Read moreThe automation and AI work behind products like this one.
Read moreOther software McDorcis has built and maintains.
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