| dc.description.abstract | Groups Savings and Loaning is a concept that is aimed at helping the poor rural communities and other marginalized people to access financial services. It is community led microfinance where communities organize themselves in groups, which may not necessarily be required to register with social services, but to enable them to come together and mobilize their own resources and walk out of economic hurdles. The purpose of this study was to examine the factors that affect the loans uptake in groups saving and loaning scheme of Mbeere North Sub County in Embu County. The study focused on management and governance structures of the groups, group’s linkages to external financial institutions and the group member’s financial literacy levels. The objectives of the study were to determine how group leadership contributes to loans uptake in group saving and loaning scheme, to investigate the influence of group linkage to formal financial institutions and the uptake and utilization of loans in groups saving and loaning scheme and to establish the extent to which literacy levels affect the loan uptake in group saving and loaning scheme. All the groups that were in the cluster were targeted where 15 group leaders were interviewed. Data was collected using a questionnaire that was administered to the respondents. Quantitative data was cleaned and keyed into a database ready for analysis. Descriptive analysis was done using SPSS analysis package where means, frequencies and regression analysis was performed. The respondents were 40% male and 60% female. All the groups were reported to have a functional constitution where group rules are stipulated. This is a key management and leadership tool in the groups. Different groups adopted different record keeping styles but the survey revealed that they were satisfactory according to the supervising patron. On linkage to other financial institutions 53.3% of the groups reported to seek other formal financial services from formal financial institutions like banks and micro finance institutions. In addition, 86.7% of the groups also reported to be aware of the customer friendly bank accounts offered by Barclays bank and equity banks. 93.3% of the respondents who participated in the survey were of the opinion that the interest rates offered by the groups are friendlier than those offered by formal banks. On group’s literacy on financial management, 66.7% reported that their groups had received technical trainings from their patrons. The results revealed that interests rates, fear of repayment and groups not having enough money to satisfy members’ requests had significant effects on loan uptake by group members. Group rules and collateral did not show statistical significance difference in affecting uptake of loans by members in savings groups. | en_US |
