Financial Risk Management and Profitability of Deposit Taking Savings and Credit Cooperative Societies in Nyeri County, Kenya

Abstract

Profitability is a key aspect of organization financial performance. Kenya SACCOs have been rated fastest growing SACCOs in Africa. However, this growth is largely attributed to growth in membership and penetration. On the other hand the sub sector has recorded irregular trend on the profitability over the last half a decade. Though past literature has tried to link financial risk management to profitability levels, a range of knowledge gaps remain undressed. The current study therefore sought to establish the effect of financial risk management on profitability targeting deposit-taking SACCOs in Nyeri County. To address this objective, the study targeted the following specific objectives; to examine the effect of credit mitigation, liquidity risk controls operational risk mitigation and finally compliance risk mitigation on profitability of deposit taking SACCOs in Nyeri County. Descriptive study design adopted targeting a population of 8 deposit-taking SACCOs. A census study approach was used to subject all the SACCOs to study. The respondents comprised of deposit taking SACCO managers or operational manager. Thus, in total, the study targeted 8 respondents from the management of the SACCOs. Questionnaires were adopted as a tool for data collection. The researcher administered questionnaires to the respondents by dropping to the respondent office and collected at convenient date agreed by both parties. Before undertaking the study, the researcher conducted a reliability test to assess the consistency of the tool using Cronbach’s Alpha. The study used descriptive and inferential statistic in summarizing the data. Under descriptive statistics, the researcher used mean and standard deviation. To test the significance of study variables, the researcher used Pearson correlation and simple linear regressions. The researcher adhered to research ethic during data collection period. The study findings are presented in charts and tables. The study found compliance risk control; liquidity risk control and operational risk control had significant effect on the performance of Saccos in Nyeri while credit risk control was found insignificant in predicting performance of Saccos in Nyeri County. The study recommends Saccos to intensify the compliance risk control, liquidity risk control and the operational risk control practices in enhancement of Sacco’s performance.