Sacco deposits and sacco shares are not the same thing

Most Kenyans in a sacco have money in two places inside it and talk about both as "my sacco savings". They behave very differently, and the difference decides what happens when you need the money.

Share capital

Your shares are your stake in the sacco. They are what makes you a member rather than a customer, and in most saccos they also set how much you can borrow.

• They pay a dividend, declared after the year ends and voted at the AGM.
• The dividend depends on how the sacco did. It is not a rate you were promised.
• You cannot withdraw them. To get share capital out you generally have to leave the sacco, and often to find another member to transfer the shares to. This catches people out badly.

Deposits

Your deposits are savings. They are the pool the sacco lends from, and they are usually what your borrowing limit is a multiple of.

• They earn interest on deposits, also declared annually.
• They are withdrawable, subject to the sacco's own rules and notice period.
• In most saccos the deposit balance, not the share balance, is the number that moves when you save monthly.

What they actually pay

The Sacco Societies Regulatory Authority publishes sector averages each year. From its 2025 annual report, published 28 September 2026:

Two things are worth noticing. The dividend is consistently the higher figure — and it is paid on the money you cannot take out. And both fell year on year.

These are sector averages. Individual saccos vary widely, and SASRA's report does not publish a per-sacco payout table; the appendices carry assets, deposits, loans and income, not rates. Your own sacco's figure comes from its AGM papers, and that is the number to use.

Tax

Dividends on share capital are withheld at 5% — lower than almost anything else a Kenyan saver earns. A 10% dividend keeps 9.5%.

Interest on deposits is less clear. You will find both 5% and 15% quoted confidently in different places, and we have not found an authoritative source that settles it for saccos specifically. So Ipahco does not publish an after-tax figure for sacco deposit interest. Showing a number we cannot stand behind would be worse than showing none, and your sacco can tell you what it actually withheld from last year's payment.

Choosing between them

This is mostly not a yield question.

Share capital pays more and is illiquid — genuinely illiquid, not inconvenient. Deposits pay less and can be withdrawn. If the money might be needed, that is the decision, and the 3.3-point gap in the averages above is the price of being able to reach it.

The borrowing multiple is the other half. If your sacco lends three times deposits, then every shilling of deposit is also three shillings of borrowing capacity, which is worth something that no yield table captures.

Before you commit

• Is the sacco regulated by SASRA? Deposit-taking saccos are supervised and publish audited accounts. Non-deposit-taking ones operate under a different regime.
• Ask for the last three years' declared rates, not one. One good year says little.
• Ask what happens to share capital when a member exits — the process and how long it has taken recently.
• Check whether the dividend is paid on your average share balance or your closing balance. It changes what a December top-up is worth.

Tracking it on Ipahco

A sacco holding goes on Funds and saccos like any other. Record what you paid in and what your own statement says it is worth, and the gain is the subtraction — never a balance projected from a published rate, because a sector average is not what any particular member earned.

Where we hold the published figure, it is shown beside yours. The gap between the two is the useful part: it is the only way to tell a sacco that is underpaying from a year in which everyone paid less.