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Main Objective of the Study: Examine the relationship among corporate governance, firm characteristics, external environment, and performance of financial institutions in Uganda. Value of the Study: The paper is expected to create value to different categories of groups like: the central bank, as a regulatory body; financial institutions that can benchmark with the views of different scholars; the public can make suitable decisions regarding choices where to bank and borrow; the academia in terms of research; and the government in terms of planning, policy formulation, and budgeting for the country. The paper is expected to make significant contributions to theory building by affirming to current theories. The paper made policy recommendations aimed at enhancing firm performance within the sector, given the magnitude of corporate governance, firm characteristics, and the external environment. The paper provided a different perspective of understanding firm performance of financial institutions by integrating, the agency theory, resource dependence theory, transaction cost theory, and the stakeholder theory. Theoretical

Purpose The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of portfolio size on the financial performance of portfolios of investment firms in Kenya. Methodology: The research design adopted a descriptive survey study. This implied that the total population of this study is 90 firms as given by the Kenya Association of Investment Groups (KAIG). For representativeness purposes, the current study took a sample size of 50% of the population. This was 45 firms.  The study used secondary data from the financial statements of the investments firms. The selected period was 5 years. The researcher used frequencies, averages and percentages in this study. The researcher used Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) to generate the descriptive statistics and also to generate inferential results. Regression analysis was used to demonstrate the relationship between the portfolio size and the performance of investment firms.Results: The finding reveal that investments firms in Kenya had put the biggest allocation of funds in stocks, followed by real estate portfolio and the least holding was in bond and money market funds.  The findings also reveal that that the stocks portfolio generated the highest returns followed by bond and money market returns while real estate portfolio generated the least returns. Unique contribution to theory, practice and policy: It was recommended that investment managers should consider increasing the number of stocks from the current average of 13 stocks to between 16 to 20 stocks.  Such a portfolio size would be optimal since approximately 91% of risk would have been diversified. This will solve the question in mind of investment managers which has been as to how many individual stocks or investments are needed to compose an optimal portfolio. An optimal portfolio is preferred over a maximized portfolio due to the risk return tradeoff.

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The objective of this paper was to conduct literature review on how credit risk management impacts efficiency and to identify the knowledge gaps in the relationship between the two variables. This study will help the government in policy direction as far as growing the financial sector as a precursor to credit risk management and its contribution to growth in terms of improved savings, improved per capita income, improved credit to private sector and increased employment levels both directly and indirectly. From the empirical studies reviewed, credit risk management was found to influence financial performance but there is no concrete evidence on the relation that credit risk management has with efficiency of SACCOs. The previous studies have mostly focused on financial performance instead of efficiency and they also differ on the direction of the relationship between the two variables. The difference in findings among the scholars might arise from methodological differences and operationalization of the study variables. Contextual differences might also explain the inconsistent findings as most of the studies have focused on commercial banks and in different economies. Future studies should investigate underlying variables that can explain the relationship between credit risk management and efficiency of SACCOs. Keywords: Credit risk management, efficiency, SACCOs.