THE ROLE OF FINANCIAL SERVICE ACCESSIBILITY AS A GROWTH STRATEGY IN COMMERCIAL BANKS: A CASE STUDY OF EQUITY BANK NAKURU TOWN

Abstract

The role of financial service accessibility as a growth strategy at equity bank has received considerable attention in the last twenty five years showing effective connection. The specific objective therefore was to assess and determine how financial institutional factors, financial structure, collateral requirements, and awareness of funding opportunities affect growth strategies in commercial banks.The Equity bank branch offices Nakuru town was the area where the general objective of the study was conducted of which has a workforce of 125 permanent employees as at January 2016. The study adapted a descriptive research design. Simple random sampling technique was employed. Sample size of 65 respondents was determined using Nassiuma’s formula. Primary data was then collected using questionnaires and results were presented in tables and figures. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The study findings indicated that the banks institutional factors(r = 0.224, p = 0.073), collateral requirement(r = 0.394, p = 0.010), and awareness of funding opportunity (r = 0.280, p = 0.005)had a significant effect on growth strategies. Financial structure (r = 0.840, p = 0.508) was found to have negative significant influence on growth strategies. Multiple linear regression analysis showed that institutional factors (β= 0.003, p value=0.791), financialstructure (β = -0.027, p value=0.552), collateral requirement (β= 0.166, p value=0.013) and awareness of funding opportunity (β = 0.164, pvalue=0.072) were all of a particular significant. This study found out that equity bank collateral security requirement(β= 0.166, p value=0.013) had a positive significant influence on growth strategies in commercial banks implying that effective collateral requirement practices leads to increased access to financial services achieving growth strategies. On awareness of funding opportunity (β = 0.164, p-value=0.072), findings are in line with this study in which efficient and effective awareness of funding opportunities had a positive significant influence on growth strategies. Findings also show that institutional factors (β= 0.003, p value=0.791) have significant but almost weaker influence on growth strategies of the bank.The key limitation was that the respondents were not willing to give the required information likely due to fear of intimidation or negative image perceived towards them after they gave the information out. This problem was handled by provision of an introductory letter from university that assured them that the information given would be treated confidentially and used for academic purpose only. The study thus concluded that effective and reliable financial structure, awareness of funding opportunities, collateral requirement and institutional factors were of significant importance towards the growth strategies of commercial banks. It is important to note that these factors are only responsible for variation of 15% of growth strategies. The study recommends that the bank should continue enhancing access to their financial products and services as well as coming up with more means and growth strategies towards creation of high level of quality services for this would enhance growth of equity bank. In addition, a research on effect of financial structure as a financial service accessibility factors need to be carried out to ascertain the negative correlation displayed in this study.