Innovative Technological Services And Financial Performance Of Deposit Taking Savings And Credit Cooperatives In Nairobi City County, Kenya

ABSTRACT

Innovative technological services are crucial to sustain organizations’ financial performance and raise their competitive strengths. Savings and credit cooperative society are the main drivers of economic and social development in rural areas of developing countries. In Kenya 81% of the population, rely on the Savings and credit cooperative society to access financial services. However, the use of Savings and credit cooperative society by Kenyans as a financial service provider has been declining. The Savings and credit cooperative societies are faced with challenges of survival due to decline of members. The decline is attributed to the competition from banks, which have embraced financial innovations. The study therefore sought to investigate the effect of innovative technological services on financial performance of Savings and credit cooperative society in Nairobi City County, Kenya. The specific objectives include; evaluating the influence of use of mobile banking, internet banking, credit/debit cards and Electronic funds transfer. The study employed descriptive survey research design and had a population of 410 of management employees that are directly involved in management of the Savings and credit cooperative societies registered and regulated by Sacco Societies Regulatory Authority in Nairobi City County. The respondents were purposively selected; top level management, middle level management and lower level management. To get the sample size 30% of the target population which is termed as a good demonstration was used for analysis. The sample was selected through stratified random sampling. Therefore, the sample size was 123 respondents. The researcher used questionnaires to collect primary data from the sample population and secondary data was collected from the Savings and credit cooperative societies’ reports and other related studies. There was a pilot test for questionnaire before carrying out the data collection to determine instrument reliability. After collection, the data was edited, coded, classified, and analysed using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics using Statistical Package for Social Sciences software. The results show that a positive relationship between financial performance and innovative technological services was established. From the findings on the multiple regression analysis, the value of R square is 0.916. This indicates that 91.6% of variance in dependent variable (financial performance) is explained by variance in the independent variables (innovative technological services). This shows that 91.6% changes in the savings and credit cooperative society financial performance could be accounted for by mobile banking services, internet banking, credit cards and electronic fund transfer at 95% confidence interval. The regression equation established, taking all factors (mobile banking services, internet banking, credit cards and electronic funds transfer) constant at zero, the financial performance of deposit taking Sacco’s will be 4.456. Further, taking all other independent variables at zero, a unit increase in mobile banking services will lead to a 0.545 increase in financial performance. A unit increase in internet banking will lead to a 0.318 increase in financial performance; a unit increase in credit cards will lead to a 0.356 increase in financial performance while a unit increase in electronic funds transfer will lead to a 0.303 increase in financial performance. The study recommended that the government should create policies that enables conducive environment for diffusion of innovations whereas academic institutions should intensify and encourage more research on innovation capabilities and financial performance of savings and credit cooperatives. Also, deposit taking savings and credit cooperatives should intensify development of technology in fund transfer since they have a considerable positive influence of financial performance