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Sen’s capability approach emphasizes the importance of freedom and choice in leading the life that one values. In the capability approach, a person converts the vector of commodities into functionings. This conversion depends upon personal, social and environmental factors. These conversion factors are important because they constrain the capability achievement of individuals, a matter that is especially important for the poor. Using the case of a credit cooperative in Malaysia, this article seeks to demonstrate the importance of conversion factors and how it is possible to improve the capabilities of the poor.

This study examined the fintech systems used by savings and credit cooperative institutions in South Africa. The study objectives included assessing fintech systems used by savings and credit cooperative institutions, services dependent on these technologies, and the benefits and implications of adopting these fintech systems. The research design utilised a qualitative paradigm, with sampling delimited by the combined application of convenience and purposive methods. This process yielded a sample of twelve participants from six distinct South African organisations, from whom primary data was acquired via semi-structured, mixed-mode interviews (online and in-person). The findings revealed significant variations in fintech adoption across the savings and credit cooperatives. While some institutions used advanced cloud-based platforms and customised digital solutions, others remained dependent on traditional, manual methods. The services dependent on technological systems included fund distribution, member onboarding, accounting procedures, contribution collection, loan provision, and administration. The main benefits of fintech adoption included improved efficiency, enhanced service delivery, and better financial management. The study recommended training to improve employees’ digital skills while at the same time designing fintech systems with intuitive interfaces, clear instructions, and multilingual support to accommodate diverse users.

Savings and credit cooperatives (SACCOs) are crucial institutions in promoting financial accessibility. SACCOs provide financial loans to individuals who may not have access to traditional banking. SACCOs take their own risk to get loan defaults from the offerings because member loans are approved without checking the members’ credit background by SACCO committees. This study aims to investigate factors influencing loan defaults of savings and credit cooperatives in Thailand. Based on the savings and credits cooperative database in November 2023, the cooperative has emergency loans, regular loans, and special loans totaling 11,441 contracts. In this study, all loan contracts of this cooperative were used to analyze. The data were divided into two categories of debt classification, including (1) non-default status and (2) default status. The data were analyzed using logistics regression to select the highest accuracy model. Furthermore, the finding reveals that the highest accuracy model, at 99.78%, contains five variables, including interest rate, collateral value, remaining contract duration, outstanding debt, and installment amount. The savings and credit cooperatives institution should adjust the loan interest rates according to economic conditions. Moreover, closely monitoring members with high remaining debt would help the institution prevent loan defaults, and the institution should also create a conservative loan approval policy to reduce its loan default. AcknowledgmentsThe research for the work featured in this article is funded by the Prince of Songkla Savings and Credit Cooperatives, Limited.

This research is about the rural credit cooperative Cresol Vale Europeu, linked to the Central Cresol Baser, belonging to the Cresol System. The Cooperative was born at the end of 2018, through the incorporation of five singular cooperative that exist in the cities of ÁguasMornas, Botuverá, Ituporanga, São João do Itaperiú and Schröeder. Credit cooperatives in the solidarity financial system were created in the end of twentieth century to democratize financial services to the excluded population. Historically, rural credit for family farming was the main financial product of the Cresol System. This situation has been changing in recent years due to external factors to the cooperative and others factors. This research has studied how rural credit fits into this new environment of Cresol’s performance, analyzing its results, potentialities and limits in terms of cooperative governance and rural development. This investigation was carried out based on field research with social actors in the territory of cooperative’s operation, through semi-structured interviews with cooperative family farmers, technicians and managers. In their view, the results obtained by the Cooperative in its policies of rural credit for family farming are the fruit of a close work, which has managed, over time, to improve its governance in the face of the challenges imposed by the financial market. However, the main challenge lies in the paradox between ensuring the growth and expansion of the Cooperative and strengthening social ties that maintain a good relationship with the membership, especially the rural environment that is the origin of the Cooperative.

Credit cooperatives are financial intermediaries that pay attention to social criteria. Thus, if such entities want to survive and thrive in the new international context, they cannot ignore their inefficiencies in both the financial and social dimensions of their activity. However, previous research on efficiency in credit cooperatives is very limited and only considers their financial activity. To date, no study has been published giving evidence through indicators on whether these banking institutions are socially efficient. This paper therefore constructs a social efficiency index of Spanish credit cooperatives during the period 2008–2014 and examines its main explanatory factors. After applying a two-stage Data Envelopment Analysis approach, the results from the first stage indicate that, on average, the social efficiency of Spanish credit cooperatives reaches an acceptable level of 66.42 %. Second-stage truncated regression reveals that entities with a greater proportion of branches in urban areas are socially less efficient, whereas both their size and the number of service points have a positive effect. Interestingly, social efficiency also varies significantly depending on the regional location of credit cooperatives in Spain. As a result, our findings enable these Social Economy financial institutions to both know their performance relative to their social activity and use this information to improve their competitiveness in the future.

Credit cooperatives not only promote the rural economy but also play an important role in providing effective and green financing. This paper aims to study the role of financial sustainability in the relationship between credit cooperation and income growth. The scale of the credit cooperatives and the financial sustainability were selected as two instrumental variables to mitigate the endogeneity of credit cooperative loans. Based on the data from 74 village‐level surveys collected from Inner Mongolia, the credit effect and income increase impact of the credit cooperative scale and financial sustainability were analyzed by two‐stage least‐squares (2SLS) analysis. The study found that the scale of the credit cooperatives can positively affect credit cooperative loans to increase farmer income, with financial sustainability playing as a moderator; credit cooperatives will have a more significant income‐increasing effect on villages with a better economic foundation or lower poverty rate but will have no significant effect on villages with a poor economic foundation or high poverty rate.

Purpose Rural credit cooperatives (RCCs) have long dominated China’s rural credit market and met most of agricultural credit demands while the existing literature seldom examines their contribution to agricultural sector. The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence on the contribution of RCCs to agricultural growth, using China’s provincial panel data from 1997 to 2014. Design/methodology/approach Both static fixed effects models and two-step generalized method of moment dynamic panel data models, which control the endogeneity, are employed to identify the causality from RCC credit to agricultural growth in China. Findings The results show that the credit from RCCs increases the agricultural output significantly. A 1 percent increase in RCC credit leads to agricultural growth of about 0.08 percent, which is robust to various empirical specifications. Further study shows that the contribution of RCC credit to agricultural growth decreases from the most developed eastern region to the least developed western region and increases over time. Research limitations/implications The results imply that RCC credit is critical in financing agricultural activities by relaxing rural credit constraints and intense competition strengthens the contribution of RCCs to agricultural growth by improving managerial efficiency and developing diversified financial products to meet better rural credit demands. Originality/value To the authors’ knowledge, this is first empirical study on the effect of RCC credit on agricultural growth despite of many on the role of financial development in agricultural growth.

The growing urgency of global sustainability challenges, intensified by climate disasters and socio-economic disruptions, highlights the need for financial systems that integrate ethical principles and societal goals. Credit cooperatives and ethical financial institutions are emerging as key players in aligning financial activities with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Existing literature explores sustainable finance methodologies, innovative regulatory frameworks, and financial instruments like impact investing and green bonds. However, the potential of credit cooperatives and digital finance in fostering sustainable development remains underexplored. This study seeks to analyze the intersection of sustainable finance and credit cooperatives, emphasizing their role in advancing resilience, inclusivity, and sustainability within financial ecosystems. Using a qualitative approach, the study reviews recent literature, policies, and case studies to identify trends, challenges, and opportunities in social finance and credit cooperatives. It evaluates regulatory innovations, digital finance advancements, and innovative financial instruments to propose actionable recommendations. The objective is to provide insights into how sustainable finance models and credit cooperatives can bridge the gap between financial and social impact while fostering public policies that promote equity and innovation. Sustainable finance offers transformative potential for addressing global challenges. Credit cooperatives, coupled with technological advancements like blockchain and adaptive regulations, can drive financial inclusion and sustainability. Future research should focus on empirical validation, hybrid financial instruments, and standardized impact metrics to enhance the scalability and effectiveness of sustainable finance initiatives.

Increasing institutional capital through deposit mobilization keeps the cost of capital low, thus leading to financial sustainability. However, little is known about how deposit mobilization affects financial sustainability. Using balanced panel data of 166 rural savings and credit cooperatives (RUSACCOs) from Ethiopia over the period of 2014–2016, we investigated the effect of deposit mobilization on financial sustainability. The results of the panel regression estimates showed that, among the deposits mobilization variables, the deposit to loan ratio, deposit to total asset ratio, the volume of deposits, and demand deposit ratio had a significant direct impact on financial sustainability. The fixed effect regression result for interest rate spread showed that an inverse relationship existed between the interest rate spread and financial sustainability. Furthermore, according to our robust fixed effect regression results, among the control variables, the age of the institution and inflation rate affects financial sustainability. Contrary to our expectations, the number of members and the percentage of woman members were not significant. This may be attributed to the fact that some members were inactive for a long period. We suggest that RUSACCOs should focus on deposit mobilization specifically on demand deposits and keep the interest rate spread narrower to ensure their sustainability.

If banks' performance is to be be evaluated against the objectives they actually pursue, assessments of stakeholder-oriented banks should go beyond financial efficiency. Furthermore, also the environment these institutions operate in has to be kept in mind when interpreting levels of managerial inefficiency. For 401 Austrian regional banks, this study compares financial efficiency to a measure of social efficiency that considers several kinds of stakeholder benefits. Both efficiency scores are calculated by use of data envelopment analysis. In a second estimation stage, we use truncated regression to account for differences in efficiency due to the market environment. Our results show that efficiency rankings across Austrian savings banks and credit cooperatives change considerably when their double bottom line and local market factors are considered. Both issues thus are important for adequate and fair performance benchmarking.