ASCA was incorporated under the Companies Act, 2015 on 27 February 2025 as a company limited by guarantee, often shortened to CLG. That phrase appears on our documents and in our name, and it is not decoration. The legal form was chosen deliberately, and it tells you something useful about how the alliance is meant to behave.
A company without shareholders
Most companies people meet are limited by shares. They have shareholders, those shareholders own a portion of the company, and if the company does well the shareholders can be paid a dividend or sell their shares at a profit. The company exists, in the end, to create value for the people who own it.
A company limited by guarantee has no shares and no shareholders. It has members instead. Those members do not own a slice of the organisation that they can sell, and they cannot take profits out of it. Instead, each member guarantees a nominal amount towards the organisation’s debts if it is ever wound up. That guarantee is typically small, and it is the extent of a member’s financial liability.
Why the form suits an alliance
The consequence is that a company limited by guarantee cannot be used to enrich its members directly. Any surplus it generates has to go back into its stated objectives. For a body whose purpose is to advocate for agricultural and community-based savings and credit co-operative societies, that is exactly the right constraint.
It means member societies can participate without worrying that the alliance will accumulate value for some other group of owners, or that control could be bought. It also matches the co-operative principle of autonomy and independence: the members are the organisation, and there is no separate ownership interest sitting above them.
What it does not mean
Two clarifications are worth making plainly, because the terms are easy to confuse.
First, a company limited by guarantee is not the same thing as a co-operative society. ASCA’s members are co-operative societies, registered under co-operative law. ASCA itself is registered under company law. These are different registers with different rules, and the alliance is not a SACCO.
Second, being a company limited by guarantee does not make ASCA a regulator of anything. It is a membership body. Supervision of savings and credit co-operative societies is a separate matter handled by the relevant authority, which we cover in a separate article.
Checking the record
Company registrations in Kenya, including companies limited by guarantee, are handled through the Business Registration Service, which maintains the official register. Member societies and partners who want to confirm the alliance’s registration details can do so through that office.
