Vodacom Group CEO Shameel Joosub (pictured) pointed to growing popularity of small loans and insurance products as he laid out plans to achieve an annual growth rate of 20 per cent across its financial services products, Bloomberg reported.

In an interview, Joosub said offering small loans of between $2 and $3 were gaining popularity in markets such as Kenya, while in its home market of South Africa the operator was gaining traction from funeral insurance.

Vodacom South Africa does not offer mobile money services, but does provide insurance on contracts and devices. For Kenya, its Safaricom business offers a wide range of financial products including formal loans, overdrafts, mobile money and insurance.

Across Vodacom’s other markets its focus is on mobile money services with the m-Pesa brand operating in Lesotho, Mozambique, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

In the majority of its markets it also provides loans in collaboration with traditional banking partners.

The company regularly highlights the progress and importance of mobile money and financial services to its business in recent earnings statements.

In its fiscal Q3 2019 trading update earlier this month, the company reported 37 per cent of its users across its International division (which excludes South Africa and Kenya) used mobile money services at end-December 2019.