Effects of commercial banks personal banking services on the operations of savings and credit cooperative(SACCO) societies operating in public universities in Kenya

Abstract

The Kenyan financial Co-Operative Sector, referred to as the Savings and Credit Co- Operatives (SACCO), play an important role in the Kenyan financial sector. SACCOs have been popular among employees and the agricultural sector. They have, for a long time, been providers of development loans, credit, and most recently processing of salaries. Lately, the commercial banks have become very liberal with their loan schemes targeting employees who need not necessarily be account holders. By luring employees who are members of SACCOs, the banks have become direct competitors to SACCOs. This direct competition must have had effect on the operations of SACCOs. The study therefore, aimed at assessing the effect this might have had on SACCOs. The objectives of this study include; examining the effect of commercial banks' lending activities on the SACCO societies operating in the public universities, the products that attract SACCO members to withdraw from the society, establish products and services that attract and retain members to the SACCOs, and assess the various strategies that SACCO societies can adopt to mitigate the negative effects arising from competition from commercial banks. The study is based on two SACCO societies operating in two public universities namely Kenversity of Kenyatta University, and Fundilima of Jomo Kenyatta University. These SACCOs have a total of 3,303 members. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used in the research. A sample size of 230 respondents was used in the study. A combination of stratified and simple random sampling techniques was used in identifying the respondents. Data was collected by use of both questionnaires and interviews. Data collected was analyzed using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) and Microsoft excel.