Financial innovations on financial performance of savings and credit co-operative societies in Meru county,Kenya
Abstract
There is more to innovation than commercializing ideas and inventions. What is labeled as an
innovation may have little or no novelty in practice but slight change in the use or application of
the innovation. This study explored the area of innovation and performance of SACCOs in Meru
County guided by the following objectives: To determine the effect of process innovation on
financial performance of SACCOs in Meru County; to establish how product innovation affects
financial performance; evaluate institutional innovation and financial performance of SACCOs
in Meru County. The study was anchored on Schumpeter's innovation theory; Task Technology
fit theory, and Theory of Induced Institutional innovation. The study was conducted using a
descriptive survey research approach. The target population of 162 respondents was drawn from
the 18 SACCOs licensed by SASRA to operate in Meru County. It comprised staff from the
marketing, credit, accounting, customer service department and the management. The population
was divided into strata, and random samples were taken from each stratum to ensure adequate
representation of all classes of employees and reduce the probability of respondent biases.
Questionnaires were administered to the sampled respondents, and statistical analysis was
conducted using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) to compute descriptive
statistics and regression analysis. The Model summary of the regression analysis showed that all
the independent variables accounted for 51.3% of the variance of Sacco's performance. Process,
Product, and institution innovation had a positive correlation with financial performance of
SACCOs in Meru County. According to the study, SACCOs should reconsider how innovative
their organization is by placing a higher priority on investing in self-service digital channels than
on spending money to open new branches. As a result, they will be able to take advantage of the
opportunities offered by digitization.