Credit Requirements and Access to Women Enterprise Fund; a Case of Women Groups in Gilgil Sub County, Nakuru County Kenya

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine the influence of credit requirements on accessing women enterprise fund among women self help groups in Gilgil. The objectives of this study was to establish how collateral requirements influence access to women enterprise fund, extent to which capacity requirements influence access to women enterprise fund, what extent does documentation requirements influence the accessibility of Women Enterprise Fund and does character requirements influence access to the women enterprise fund. The study used descriptive research design using primary data. The target population of the study was225 women group leaders in Gilgil Sub-County.142 participants were sampled through simple random sampling method. Primary data collection used questionnaire and was self-administered to the selected sample size. Findings of the study have been presented using frequency tables and figures. The study established that collateral requirements had a moderate positive influence on access to women enterprise fund, correlation was significant at 0.424.The combined mean for collateral requirements and access to women enterprise fund was 4.41 and the sd was 0.574.Most of the respondent’s 54(48%) agreed physical collateral influence access to individual loans from women enterprise fund; Capacity requirements had a strong positive influence on access to women’s enterprise fund significant was at 0.821,the combined mean was 4.50 implying that majority of respondents strongly agreed that capacity requirements influenced access to women enterprise fund and the combined sd was 0.56.Majority of respondents 109(97 %) agreed that having business activity influenced access to women enterprise fund; Documentation requirements had a strong influence on access to women’s enterprise fund correlation at 0.814 and the combined mean was 4.58 meaning majority of respondents 85(76%) strongly agreed that group registration influences access to women enterprise fund among women groups in Gilgil subcounty. The combined sd was 0.64.Character requirements had a moderate positive influence of 0.462 on access to women’s enterprise fund, the combined mean and the sd was 4.39 and 0.71 respectively. For the combined mean of 4.39, it meant that most of the respondents strongly agreed that character requirements influenced access to women enterprise funds among women groups in Gilgil Subcounty 81 (72%) respondents confirmed CRB clearance influenced access to women enterprise fund for individual borrowers. The study recommends review by WEF board on collateral policy especially on LPO financing as majority of women lacked the securities required; WEF should consider introducing seed capital product for start ups as majority of young women had no business thus lacking opportunity to be financed through WEF and group borrowing was becoming unpopular with majority of women thus WEF should introduce many individual loan products that suits women.