Effect of competitive strategies adopted by NIC bank limited on performance of retail banking

Abstract

The confluence of market, societal and technological possibilities makes the present times markedly different for banks than the past. Banking has gotten progressively ‘better’ over the years, but slowly. It is a question of whether this pace of improvement could happen faster, how that could happen and what consequences would be. The banking industry in Kenya has witnessed immense competition with emergence of Mobile money services like Mpesa,Equitel, Yucash, Orange money, deposit taking micro finance being converted into fully fledged bank and improvement of technology used to render services; it calls for very competitive strategies to be put in place to ensure survival of banks. To survive in the market, the review of strategies has to be done consistently to ascertain to understand the effect of these strategies on the performance of organisations. This study was set out to investigate the effect of competitive strategies adopted by Nic Bank limited on the performance of retail banking. The study adopted case study design to carry out this research where an interview guide targeting senior managers of the bank was employed to collect data. Both primary and secondary data were sourced and used for analysis. The findings were analyzed by use of content analysis. The study revealed that Nic Bank was using majorly a mix of porter’s generic strategies and to some extent it had started to employ collaborative strategies to penetrate the Kenyan market. The study recommended the enhanced use of market focus strategy, collaborative strategy and expansion into untapped market to be able to increase its market share and be able to give convenience and proximity to the clients. The researcher recommended that further research should be done to determine performance of other banks based on strategies they have put in place to see if findings will be the same. The researcher recommended a similar study should be done in all banks to arrive at generalization as it is always difficult to summarize case studies into general propositions and theories. The study established that the strategies employed by Nic Bank have really worked for the bank and more focus should be put on collaborative strategy to enable the growth of the brand image.