Effect of alternative financial delivery channels on performance of commercial banks: a survey of commercial banks in Kisumu city, Kenya

Abstract

Though commercial banks continue to invest in rolling out branches that are complimented by various delivery channels, the challenge of access to formal financial services by customers remains a big impediment to the banks’ financial performance. To address these challenges, the Central Bank of Kenya released a legislation that allows commercial banks to contract third party retail networks as alternative financial delivery channel players which were to cater for 80% of the banking population by 2013. However, to date only 38% of the set target has been realised and it is not clear whether or not the realized proportion has any significant contribution on the banks’ performance. It was on that basis that the study sought to establish the effect of financial delivery channels on performance of commercial banks in Kenya. Specifically the study sought to: establish the effect of mobile banking on the performance of commercial banks in Kenya, to establish the effect of agency banking on performance of commercial banks, and to establish the effect of internet banking on performance of commercial banks. The study adopted correlation research design and was guided by the Agency theory. Primary data were gathered using both structured and semi-structured questionnaires. These were supplemented with ©Author(s) Licensed under Creative Common Page 228 secondary data gathered from the banks’ published reports. Out of 33 commercial banks, Data from three banks were used for pretesting and a total of 30 commercial banks were visited during the actual data collection and the branch managers were interviewed. The study estimated an R2 of 0.501, implying that 50.1% of changes in the bank’s performance are explained by the independent variables. It further revealed that mobile banking (β = 0.402, p = 0.001) and agency banking (β = 0.179, p = 0.050) had significant positive effects on banks performance. It is thus, recommended that use of mobile banking and agency banking be enhanced for improved performance. The study findings may help the bank managers in the financial planning and provide literature for further research in the banking sector