Development

  • Developing a collective savings culture has always been the priority of SACCOL, promoting what it believes to be a savings led initiative. From the SACCO results to date, people who have joined SACCO's adopt the savings culture with vigour, and their personal assets grow.
  • SACCOL promotes collective savings groups and encourage them to formalise their member based initiatives into formalised financial intermediaries, encouraging broader participation in the financial sector through providing a range of financial services to their members such as a variety of savings and loan products as well as insurance products for their members.
  • While registering a SACCO is not a particularly difficult process to undertake, the growing and operationalisation of a SACCO has required significant input from SACCOL. SACCOL has found for that extensive education and training is required at a board and staffing level to ensure the smooth operations of a SACCO. SACCOL members have furthermore adopted a resolution that all board and staff members must register for the SACCOL designed and developed educational modules. The Co-operative Banks Act furthermore requires all board members to demonstrate they have “fit and proper” capacity to hold office. SACCOL certificates of competence would demonstrate such capacity, since all SACCOL modules have been accredited with the Bankseta.

Once a SACCO is operating, and accepting deposit from its members, it is critical to ensure that members funds are safe and operating systems are sound. SACCOL has set in place a set of minimal operational ratio’s by which it monitors SACCO’s performance. The monitoring takes place through a regime of inspections, meetings with the management of the SACCO and follow ups. Reporting to SACCOL plays a vital role in our monitoring.

Member Services

SACCOL is primarily involved in the start-up and growth of Savings and Credit Cooperatives in South Africa..

SACCOL Services to SACCO’s

SACCOL provides a wide range of services to its member SACCOs. These include:

  • Start Up Kit: A step-by-step guide enabling interested communities, through a core group, study circle or “champion” to go through 12 steps required to start a SACCO. These include promotion, developing statutes, break-even analysis, holding their formation meeting and registering their SACCOs with the Registrar of Cooperatives and SACCOL
  • Training: Training the elected directors is the second focus of our organisation and to that end a series of two distance education packages – Board Orientation Programme and Board Advanced Program – have been developed. In conjunction with the Centre for Continuing Education, University of the Western Cape, a series of distance education self learn modules were also developed. These are to be completed by members or by boards in study circles. Topics covered include introduction to SACCOs, SACCO structures, Roles and responsibilities of the board, Board/management relations, member relations, financial statements, financial analysis, financial goals and planning, risk management and lending. To-date over 150 board members have registered for the modules with 40 (??) board members having completed the Board Orientation Program.

SACCOL has been registered with the Bankseta as an accredited service provider and the modules have all been aligned to NQF requirements, ranging from level 2 to 5. The unit standards will be reviewed in 2010.

  • Bookkeeping and Computerisation: SACCOL offers to SACCOs the option of manual or computerised accounting software.
    • Manual accounting is based on the Kalamazoo system of record keeping.
    • The Computerised Accounting Package (CUBIS) is a stand alone system, which provides SACCOs with a comprehensive member management system as well as a back office general ledger to maintain their books of account.

To facilitate this SACCOL sourced a windows based computerised Credit Union accounting package with a help and tutorial manual on Cd-Rom. The package takes 15 minutes to install, and SACCOL provides on site training to bookkeepers on how to maintain members’ records as well as providing ongoing telephonic support from its head office.

  • Peer support: In each of the provinces, “provincial forums” have been established whereby SACCOs get together on a monthly basis to discuss amongst themselves common issues and problems. Peer support and study circles provide a network for the various SACCOs to find the technical assistance they require in the running of their SACCOs.
  • On going support: SACCOL provides all the above-mentioned services to its member co-operatives with no return (payment) for the first year of the SACCOs operation. Once the SACCO starts generating income (giving out loans), SACCOL begins to invoice its member co-operatives.
  • Provincial office support: SACCOL currently has offices in the Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Gauteng and Limpopo provinces. SACCOL is able to promote the concept, provide the start up support, training, regulation and monitoring, co-ordinate peer support and ongoing support from within these provinces.
  • Central Finance Facility administration: The CFF was established by SACCOs to provide for their short-term liquidity needs. SACCOL administers this fund on their behalf. The CFF is a secondary co-operative and as such a separate legal entity from SACCOL. However, provision has been made in the constitution of the CFF that a SACCO can not be a member of the CFF if it is not also a member of SACCOL.
  • Value added products: SACCOL was tasked by its members to source funeral insurance and credit life insurance products for its members. By centralising this SACCOL was able to negotiate favourable rates through its economies of scale.

Service Provider Organisation (SPO) Information

Name of the organisation: Savings and Credit Co-operative League of South Africa Ltd. (SACCOL)

Date of Establishment Established 1981

Registered 5 February 1998

Legal Status Cooperative Incorporated

Registration Number K6/3/9/6/77