Choice of Types of Saving Institutions in Bamenda Municipality

The growth in types and number of financial institutions in Bamenda and beyond has posed serious challenges on financial institutions as they strive to gain and maintain greater market shares. Based on the above premise, this paper sets out to investigate the drivers of customers' choice of saving institutions in Bamenda Municipality; which can be grouped into four (Njangi houses, Microfinance, Commercial Banks, Mobile Money Services). Data were primary in nature, purposively collected through self-administered questionnaire to 600 respondents. This paper used multinomial logit model to analyse the data with the help of STATA 14. The paper found out that the sociocultural factors affecting customers' choice are age, age squared, gender, educational level, advanced services, security and waiting time while the economic determinants are income, interest rate, bank charges, distance and loan services. The socio-cultural factors have a stronger magnitude as compared to the economic factors. Based on the above findings, the paper recommends that each saving institution that really wants to be attractive to customers should improve on their service quality package. This should include the offering of improved and advanced services to customers like ATM service, improving on staff friendliness and courtesy, ensuring the cleanliness and tidiness of the service points, providing prompt services and ensuring accuracy in operations at cheaper rate.