The role of cooperatives like savings and credit cooperatives (SACCOs) towards the unbanked has been critical. These cooperative societies have been providing financial support to millions of people while contributing substantially to the GDP in countries like Tanzania and Kenya.
This rapidly growing informal financial market has been subjected to new and better laws to maintain the interest of millions of members. Over the past years, SACCOs have been brought under various regulations and supervision.
These regulations generally require cooperative societies to follow various policies and rules to stay compliant. This creates operational challenges to SACCOs as they lack the required knowledge, resources and technology to adapt to them quickly. More specifically at the operational level, these regulations require SACCOs to reconstitute their boards, revise financials, enhance the corporate governance and upgrade resources to improve security and profitability.
Government regulations lay an impact on how SACCOs function. Read on to know what issues SACCOs face.
Such changing compliance requirements have identified key areas that need to be continually addressed like financial management, governance, credit management, and automation.
Wakandi, being a technology company, promotes technology as a yardstick for cooperatives to address the key areas. With the Wakandi solution, SACCOs can become more resilient and future-ready. It can help them become compliant, and future-proof their processes to comply with changing regulations.
Corporate governance – The Wakandi solution can help SACCOs implement better participation amongst the members, informed decisions and improved corporate governance. With improved governance, SACCOs can progress towards enhanced security and profitability and ensure higher regulatory compliance.
Communication and collaboration – SACCOs can bring in better communication and collaboration amongst the members for higher operational efficiency using Wakandi’s digital solution. This can lead to faster and more informed decisions between the admins and the members.
Financial management – Using Wakandi’ solution to manage finances and transactions, SACCOs can become highly flexible in implementing new financial requirements. This can include credit limits, financial ratios, turnaround time, etc, leading to better compliance.
We were invited to a workshop conducted by the Ushirika/Tanzania Cooperative Development Commission (TCDC) conducted in Dar Es Salaam. It was a two-day workshop focusing on how cooperative societies can solve challenges posed by new regulations.
Rahma Amani, Key Account Manager at Wakandi was invited as a presenter to showcase our digital solution. Rahma talked about the Wakandi solution and how the system can help SACCOS and AMCOS in Tanzania to solve the challenges that regulations bring to them by going digital. It was a great session to talk about our system and share interesting ideas.
We believe that technology can play a critical role in helping SACCOs become more digital and compliant. Know more about how technology is reshaping the informal financial sector of Africa.