By Brenda Mpoora
Saving and Credit Cooperative Societies (SACCOs) are making a tremendous contribution in promoting a savings culture and driving financial inclusion to the last mile user in Uganda.
A closer look at the 2023 FinScope report shows SACCOs had the highest growth of uptake in formal financial services from 5 percent to 14 percent. Since 2018, SACCOs grew much more in adoption against all financial services, with the proportion of Ugandans utilizing them for savings and credit more than doubling.
Beyond the uptake, SACCOs have numerous needs ranging from technology, digital infrastructure, compliance and capital to scale.
With the needs around the SACCO space and also the need to foster prosperity for all Ugandans as per the bank’s purpose, PostBank’s Wendi digital platform has positioned itself as a fast mover to support SACCOs in capital, technology and digital infrastructure needs.
For starters, Wendi is a mobile wallet built on robust and secure technologies that enable the user to self-onboard, with an inbuilt instant verification of the Ugandan national ID.
A user upon registration can ably perform various financial transactions such as peer-to-peer transfers, bank deposits and withdrawals, savings as well as several payments of bills, goods and services.
There’s already growing adoption of the Wendi use cases among SACCOs especially in Central, Northern and Western Uganda; a testament to SACCOs’ efforts to keep pace with technological advancements.
Most SACCOs are based in rural areas, and customers travel miles and miles to get to them. Through the Wendi SACCO solution, SACCO members can now digitally access their accounts and make transactions while in the comfort of their homes.
That means, members, wherever there, no longer need a pile of paperwork to apply for loans or make physical deposits. This has made work easier for staff resourcing, freeing up more time for staff to accomplish more tasks such as onboarding new members into the SACCO.
The availability of the Wendi platform through the digital application and USSD codes has allowed members with basic phones, or those in remote areas with limited access to the internet to engage in transactions without any significant challenges.
Even so, PostBank’s agency banking across the country is a cost-effective alternative for SACCOs to expand their reach and offer services in more convenient locations for their members.
PostBank’s deliberate approach to digitize SACCOs will enable them to implement best industry practices putting them ahead of the game by offering best customer service. An observation made is that SACCOs still have challenges in having reliable data and reports, which is a requirement by the regulator to license them.
The Wendi solution now enables SACCOs to locate their customers and their transaction patterns and digitally record real time financial data with reporting systems, and even comprehensive reports for compliance reasons, and quick decision making.
The icing on the cake is that this solution comes at no cost for all SACCOs but still they’re able to earn a competitive interest rate for all the money saved within the Wendi platform, or even apply for the SACCO loan, an internal product designed by PostBank to meet their capital needs.
To improve SACCO operations, PostBank embarked on a journey of financial literacy which is yielding positive results in areas of governance, risk management, licensing and using the Wendi platform.
The writer is the Head of Fintech Business at PostBank Uganda.