Sidian Bank has sponsored a two-day conference bringing together the leadership of teacher-based SACCOs from across the country.
The 10th annual conference held by KETSA started on Tuesday and will end today, Wednesday at Sportsview Kasarani reaching out to over 600,000 members participants.
KETSA brings together 22 SACCOs, formerly teachers based saccos but now have opened membership for all to join including business people and retail customers mostly employees in govt and private sector.
They also support their SACCO members by lending to them instead of them borrowing from banks besides doing advocacy role thus their motto of “unity is strength’’
Speaking at the opening ceremony, Sidian Bank CEO Chege Thumbi noted that the bank is keen on strengthening collaborative efforts with saccos through the provision of transformational financial solutions that maximise the potential of Saccoss.”
"As Sidian Bank we see Saccos as equal partners in the financial industry and we aim to complement their efforts by empowering them to offer services which they are otherwise not able to directly offer their members and therefore making them competitive in the market by being a one-stop-shop for financial solutions,” Chege said.
He added that:
“This is evident by some of the innovations the Bank has developed, such as a cash management solution, Sidian Bridge, where SACCO members can send money from Sacco accounts to any other bank in the country through our fund transfer service.”.
It was noted that Covid-19 brought challenges in the Sacco industry, including low uptake of loans due to suppressed economy that led to very high liquidity on some SACCOs.
Also, the avenues to invest in borrowed loans narrowed down and made loan uptakes low, lending to members is the first investment to ensure good returns for better dividend payments.
Saccos were able to look for other investment options so as to deploy the high liquidity well and this was partly informed of banks FDs.
