Relationship between Mobile Banking and Financial Performance of Deposit taking savings and credit cooperatives in Kericho County, Kenya

Abstract

Deposit taking savings and credit cooperatives in Kenya have long struggled to adapt to the evolving technology which has seen several savings and credit cooperatives collapse as others incur losses. Mobile banking is a digital innovation that have diffused highly into financial institution creating competitive advantage. However, there is slow uptake of mobile banking in deposit taking saving and credit cooperatives. The study therefore seeks to establish the relationship between mobile banking and financial performance of deposit taking saving and credit cooperatives in Kericho County. It was guided by task technology fit theory; a correlational research design was adopted where the target population was 108 managers of all levels in the five deposits taking savings and credit cooperatives in Kericho County. Due to a small target population under study, this research adopted the census survey technique where all top, middle, and operational level managers were used. Data were collected by the use of primary and secondary methods. Content validity was conducted through engaging field experts and digital innovation professionals to determine the validity of the research instrument, while reliability was determined through test-retest of the questionnaires where 10 respondents were picked from Tenhos Sacco Society Ltd in Bomet County for piloting. Data was analysed using both descriptive statistics which comprises means and standard deviations while hypotheses were tested using correlation coefficient and multiple regression analysis. Data was presented in form of frequency tables and pie charts. The findings established that mobile banking had a strong positive relationship with financial performance of DT-Saccos (R = 0.729; β = 0.775). The study findings may be useful to the government in formulating strategies for effective and efficient deposit taking savings and credit cooperatives; will add value to the literature in the area of digital innovations in Saccos, and lastly, it may be of help to SASRA in understanding relationships between mobile banking and financial performance of savings and credit cooperatives.