The SACCO LMS built for Kenya, hosted in the cloud
Ridge is Redian Software's own cloud-based loan management system for SACCOs, DT-SACCOs, credit unions and small microfinance institutions across Kenya and East Africa. Members onboard from their phones. Officers post disbursements from any branch. Deductions land through M-Pesa, Pesalink or check-off. Reports for SASRA come out of the same box that runs your day.
Nothing to install. Nothing to server-manage. Nothing to explain to your auditor about "where the data lives" — Ridge is hosted in a Kenyan-resident cloud with encrypted backups and a full audit trail from day one.
Start a free trial at lms.rediansoftware.com — no credit card, real data, real workflows.
What Ridge does out of the box
- Member management — KYC capture, national ID and KRA PIN validation, share capital, deposits, dividends, next-of-kin, member statement in one screen.
- Loan products — reducing balance, flat, IRR, and Islamic (Murabaha) products. Configurable fees, grace periods, penalty rules and repayment cycles.
- Loan application → disbursement — application capture, guarantor selection with share-book check, credit committee workflow, disbursement via M-Pesa, Pesalink or cheque.
- Repayments & collections — check-off file ingest for salaried members, M-Pesa STK Push, Paybill and till number reconciliation, standing orders, auto-allocation across principal / interest / penalty / insurance.
- Provisioning & NPA — SASRA-aligned classification (Normal / Watch / Substandard / Doubtful / Loss), IFRS-9 expected credit loss for external reporting, auto-provisioning, write-off workflow.
- General ledger — double-entry accounting, chart of accounts pre-configured for SACCOs, trial balance, income statement, balance sheet, cashflow.
- SASRA reporting — SS-1 to SS-9 returns generated directly from live data. No spreadsheet gymnastics before Wednesday deadlines.
- Member self-service portal — check balance, apply for a loan, view statement, request loan top-up, upload documents from a phone browser.
Why cloud, why now
Kenyan SACCOs are being pushed on three fronts at once — SASRA is tightening capital adequacy and reporting cadence, members expect the same convenience they get from mobile-first banks and MFIs, and the cost of running your own IT team, servers and backups has stopped making sense at any but the largest DT-SACCOs.
Ridge is our answer. The core LMS platform we have deployed as bespoke installations for Tier-2 African banks and microfinance institutions, re-packaged as multi-tenant SaaS for SACCOs — same engineering, same regulator-grade audit trails, a fraction of the cost.
- No servers to buy or maintain — Ridge runs on Kenyan-resident cloud infrastructure with 99.9% uptime SLA and encrypted daily backups.
- New features every quarter — you inherit them automatically, at no extra cost. The platform gets better while you focus on members.
- SASRA changes absorbed once — when the regulator updates a return format or ratio calculation, we ship the change to every Ridge SACCO on the same day. You do not manage that.
SASRA compliance is not an add-on
Ridge is built by a team that has delivered core banking for regulated banks in Kenya, Cameroon and Uganda. Regulator alignment is designed in, not bolted on:
- Prudential ratios — capital adequacy, liquidity, loan-to-deposit, non-earning-asset caps calculated in real time on the dashboard.
- Loan classification — automated bucketing per SASRA Prudential Guidelines with a full audit trail on every re-classification decision.
- Anti-money laundering — customer risk scoring, transaction monitoring, large-transaction and suspicious-transaction flagging aligned with the Financial Reporting Centre (FRC) requirements.
- Data residency — Ridge is hosted in Kenyan data centres. Your member data and loan portfolio does not leave the country.
- Audit access — read-only auditor and SASRA-inspector roles built in. You give access without giving the keys.
Payments and rails — native, not bolted on
Ridge ships pre-integrated with the payment infrastructure Kenyan SACCOs actually use:
- M-Pesa — Paybill, Till, C2B, B2C, B2B, STK Push. Auto-reconciliation of member deductions and loan disbursements.
- Pesalink — instant inter-bank transfer for disbursements and dividend payouts.
- Check-off — ingest employer check-off files, allocate against expected instalments, flag shortfalls automatically.
- RTGS / EFT — for high-value member payouts.
- Bank aggregators — Cellulant, Interswitch, Direct Pay Online where members want card payments.
The Payments team spends their day on reconciliation, not integration. That is deliberate.
Ridge vs building your own or running a legacy install
- Legacy on-premise LMS — you own the licence, the server, the DBA, the backup tape and the SASRA-update project. Every regulator change is your project to deliver.
- Building your own — attractive in a slide, expensive in reality. Two years and Ksh 20M+ to reach where Ridge is on day one, and you inherit the maintenance liability forever.
- Ridge (cloud SaaS) — monthly subscription, no capex, no server room, no backup tape, no in-house DBA. SASRA updates arrive automatically. You focus on member growth, not infrastructure.
Simple, per-SACCO pricing
Ridge is priced per-SACCO with three tiers based on active member count. No per-transaction fees, no per-loan surcharge, no percentage-of-portfolio nonsense.
| Tier | Active members | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | Up to 2,000 | Full LMS, M-Pesa, Pesalink, SASRA reporting, member portal, email support. |
| Growth | 2,000 – 10,000 | Everything in Starter + check-off, bank integrations, dedicated onboarding, SLA support. |
| Enterprise | 10,000+ | Everything in Growth + white-label branding, custom integrations, dedicated success manager, 24×7 SLA. |
Every tier includes the free trial period. First-year discounts available for SACCOs migrating from a legacy on-premise system.
Who Ridge is for
Ridge is designed for the middle 70% of the Kenyan SACCO market — 500 to 50,000-member cooperatives that outgrew spreadsheets or QuickBooks but do not need a bespoke million-shilling core banking rollout. If you are a teachers' SACCO, a matatu SACCO, a Ministry-of-something SACCO, a chama that regularised into a SACCO, a housing cooperative or a small DT-SACCO stepping into deposit-taking — Ridge is built for you.
Larger DT-SACCOs and Tier-1 institutions typically want a bespoke deployment with private cloud, custom integrations and dedicated support — we do those too. Talk to our banking team and we will point you to the right shape.
About Redian Software
Redian is a CMMI Level 3 Appraised enterprise software company. We have delivered core banking, digital channels and lending platforms for banks and microfinance institutions in Kenya, Cameroon, India, Uganda and Zambia since 2016. Ridge is our SACCO-focused SaaS product — the same engineering DNA that runs regulated banks, packaged for cooperatives.
Ready to see Ridge on your own SACCO's data? Start the free trial — you will be posting a test disbursement in ten minutes.
