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Corporate Governance Practice is a management tool that was introduced by Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) through the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) as statutory requirement for companies listed at NSE to improve their financial performance. Though corporate governance practices have been enforced in Kenya, it has in equal measure experienced cases of mismanagement of Savings and Credit Co-Operative Societies (SACCOs) that has led to collapse of a number of them and others have experienced liquidity challenges. A case in point was the mismanagement of the giant Harambee SACCO which put management of SACCOs on the spotlight. Despite several studies on Corporate Governance Practices, it is not clear how insider lending, an aspect of corporate governance, affected the financial performance of SACCOs. The study examined effect of adoption of corporate governance practices, aforementioned, on financial performance of SACCOs. Three theories guided the study, namely; Agency, Stewardship and Stakeholder theories. The study adopted descriptive research design that involved set of methods and procedures that described intended variables and how they relate to each other. The study adopted Israel, (1992) formula to sample 53 from the population of 61 SACCOs registered with the County Co-operatives Officer in Nyandarua County, and thereafter, from the 53 sampled SACCOs, two top managers were sampled. This led to a sample of 106 respondents. Primary data was collected using a structured questionnaire whereas; secondary data was collected through documentary analysis. Data was analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics and results presented in form of tables and charts. Of the 106 distributed questionnaires, 100 were duly filled and returned and therefore the response rate was 94.3%. The R square was equal to 0.778 while the adjusted R square value was 0.770 which means that 77.0% of the corresponding variation in financial performance of the SACCOs can be explained by corporate governance practices employed by the SACCOs. Multiple regression analysis indicated that insider lending had a great effect on financial performance of SACCOs with a coefficient of -0.391 while the appointment of internal auditor with a coefficient of 0.243. The variable on insider lending had a negative coefficient implying that a unit increase in insider lending led to a decrease in financial performance of the SACCOs by 0.391 units. The variables were all significant at p=0.000 and p=0.013 for the constant term. The study therefore fails to accept the null hypothesis that corporate governance practices have no statistically significant effect on the financial performance of SACCOs in Nyandarua County and states that corporate governance practices.

The study examined the role of Credit Reference Bureau (CRB) in influencing customer credit access in mitigating default risk among commercial banks in Kenya. The study was based on the theories of Adverse Selection and Hazard. The study used a Causal-Comparative descriptive survey design. The target population of the study consisted of all the 43 licensed commercial banks in Kenya and the three licensed credit reference bureaus in Kenya under the Banking Act. The researcher used a census of all commercial bank headquarters bank managers and the three headquarters credit reference bureau managers. To collect primary data, the researcher used questionnaires. Secondary data were collected from CBK loan books and CBK annual Bank supervisory reports. Data was analysed using SPSS and results presented using graphical systems. The researcher used descriptive statistics, which included the mean, median standard deviation and range to show the default rate. The inferential statistical tests comprised correlation, ANOVA regression and Chi-square analysis to test hypothesis. P -values yielded were less than 0.05, which indicated that the role played by Credit Revenue Bureau in influencing customer access to credit and mitigation of Credit Default Rate was significant among commercial banks in Kenya.Key words: credit reference bureau, credit, credit access, credit default rate and commercial banks Corresponding Author: Ruthwinnie Njeri Munene INTRODUCTIONFinancial institutions are facing an enormous risk of NPLs noting that larger loans have greater risk exposure, so the variable costs per-dollar is higher. If lenders do not take extra care, there could be more loan defaults. CRB enables banks to determine credit worthiness of their borrowers and therefore reducing the loan default risk. In this respect CRB assists in first, sharing information on default among banks; secondly, eliminating corrupt borrowers and thirdly to provide commercial professional credit reference to prospective foreign investors; and also to identify credible borrowers based on known history and character (Bofondi and Gobbi , 2003) Credit Reference Bureau provides detailed information on a person"s credit history, including information on their identity, credit accounts and loans, bankruptcies and late payments and recent inquiries. Other information shared include: proven frauds and forgeries, cheque kiting, false declarations and statements, receiverships, bankruptcies and liquidations, credit default and