Habitat for Humanity International and Swiss Capacity Building Facility launch partnership to expand climate-resilient housing finance and insurance in Kenya

Communities along Lake Victoria face growing vulnerability from seasonal flooding and persistent malaria risk. Many household live in structurally weak homes that offer limited protection from rising water levels and mosquito exposure. Access to affordable housing finance is also limited, especially for families earning their livelihoods in the informal economy.

To address to these interconnected challenges, Habitat’s Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter (TCIS) is working with local partners to co-design and deliver a bundled financial solution that integrates:

• Housing microfinance to enable safer, stronger home improvements
• Index-based flood insurance to cushion households from extreme weather events
• Malaria-linked hospital cash insurance to reduce financial strain from health emergencies
• A mobile-based early warning system that alert communities to impending floods and facilitates rapid response and payouts

Together, these components create a practical pathway for families to invest in prevention, reduce risk exposure, and avoid the financial setback that can push them deeper into poverty. 

The initiative is delivered with local partners VisionFund Kenya and Britam. VisionFund Kenya, a leading microfinance institution, provides affordable housing loans while Britam offers flood and health related insurance solutions that protect households from shocks to their homes, income and wellbeing. 

Innovation starts with a home — and when finance, insurance and technology come together, families gain the tools to build resilience from the ground up.

The project targets low- and middle-income households in Kisumu, Siaya, Migori and Homa Bay counties. Women and youth expected to make up the majority of beneficiaries.

Over the course of the project, thousands of people will gain access to improved housing finance, integrated insurance products, and financial education on climate resilience, disaster preparedness and health risk management. For many families, this will be the first time they are accessing housing finance. 

SCBF will play a central role in enabling technical assistance for the project, supporting Habitat and its partners to:

• Designing customer-focused housing microfinance products tailored for low-income households
• Embedding flood and health insurance directly into housing loan products
• Strengthening partner institutions’ operational systems and delivery models
• Training frontline staff and building institutional capacity
• Supporting piloting, learning and knowledge sharing for scale across Kenya and potentially across East Africa

By investing in innovation and institutional strengthening and innovation, SCBF enables these solutions are inclusive, and responsive to the needs of underserved communities. 

Habitat for Humanity and SCBF have a longstanding collaboration that has helped advance inclusive finance solutions across multiple countries. This new initiative in Kenya builds on that shared history and reflects a continued commitment to innovation that delivers practical impact for people facing poverty and vulnerability.

“This partnership reflects SCBF’s mission to catalyze meaningful innovation in financial services for underserved communities,” said Sitara Merchant Carter, CEO of the Swiss Capacity Building Facility. “By supporting this integrated approach to housing, health and climate resilience, we aim to strengthen families’ security today while strengthen their financial stability for the future making them more resilient.”

Designed as a scalable model, the initiative is expected to expand beyond Kenya in the future, reaching other vulnerable communities across the Lake Victoria region in Uganda and Tanzania. This will only be attainable through partnerships beyond this intervention.

As climate and health risks increasingly affect housing security worldwide, this collaboration demonstrates the power of partnerships in delivering solutions that work — for families, for communities, and for the future.

Together, we build opportunity. 
Together, we build resilience. 
Together, we build a better future — starting with a safe home.

Habitat for Humanity is a movement of people in your local area and around the world, working together to build more prosperous and vibrant communities by making sure everyone has a safe, affordable place to call home. Since our founding in 1976, together we have helped more than 62 million people globally build their futures on their own terms through access to decent housing. We’ve done that by working alongside people of all walks of life to build, repair and finance their homes, by innovating new ways of building and financing, and by advocating for policies that make constructing and accessing housing easier for everyone. Together, we build homes, communities and hope. 

The Swiss Capacity Building Facility (SCBF) is a unique membership-based organisation of public and private entities dedicated to advancing responsible financial inclusion across emerging markets. By mobilising and blending resources from both its public and private members, SCBF enables financial service providers, impact-driven organisations, and social enterprises to test, develop and scale client-centric financial solutions. Through catalytic funding - including technical assistance, repayable grants, and impact-linked finance - SCBF supports innovations that improve the lives of low-income households, smallholder farmers, and MSMEs, with a strong focus on women and youth, particularly in rural communities.

SCBF’s platform approach facilitates targeted funding, strategic partnerships, and knowledge sharing to build more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable financial systems. Its vision is to improve livelihoods and help break the cycle of poverty for those most excluded from financial systems.

Learn more: www.scbf.ch