Top 5 Banks in Ghana with good reputation to save your money with
Top 5 Banks in Ghana with good reputation: The trust most Ghanaians have in the operations of the commercial banks has not been that stable ever since the introduction of the Financial Sector Reform (FSR) policy in 2017.
The banking sector clean-up exercise which formed part of the FSR revealed the insolvency and the disastrous indebtedness of most of the locally owned commercial banks largely due to poor corporate governance.
The central bank in the process established a new bank called Consolidated Bank Ghana (CBG) to merge all the insolvent banks into one in order to safeguard depositors’ funds.
Local banks such as Unibank, Capital Bank, Beige Bank, UT Bank, and the rest were all part of the merging. Although depositors’ savings were kept intact, there was serious panic among bank customers in the country.
We’ve taken the trouble to run quick checks on top 5 commercial banks that we can comfortably say it’s safe to save with them.
GCB Bank Limited which used to be called Ghana Commercial Bank is the largest commercial bank in Ghana in terms of total operating assets and the share of the account deposits.
The bank has been operating as a universal banking institution in Ghana since the year 1953 with a nationwide workforce of over 2000 with over 150 branches and 11 agencies throughout the country. It is also worthy to note that GCB Bank took over the operations of UT Bank and Capital Bank when these two banks were declared insolvent in 2017. This added more assets to GCB bank’s existing assets.
The Bank had been wholly government-owned until 1996 when under the economic recovery programme part of the government ownership was divested.
Currently, the government of Ghana owns 21.36% share while institutional and individual holdings add up to 78.64%. In 2020, the bank’s total assets and total liabilities were reported as GHC14.9 billion, and GHC13 billion respectively.
Ecobank which is also called Ecobank Transnational Inc is a leading independent regional banking group. Ecobank has been operating in 36 countries within the African continent since 1985 with over 20,000 employees. The bank is made up of a pool of African investors with its headquarters based in Lome, Togo.
Ecobank’s operations in Ghana started in the year 1990 and currently, its workforce in the country stands above 1,600. Ecobank acquired The Trus Bank Limited (TTB) in December 2011, and this gave rise to the total assets of the bank. Currently, the bank has 67 branches nationwide.
In 2019, the bank reported total assets of GHC13.229 billion and shareholders’ equity of GHC1.784 billion with profit before tax of GHC642.496 million and profit after tax of GHC444.946 million for its operations in Ghana.
Standard Chartered plc is a British multinational banking and financial services company headquartered in London, England.
It operates a network of more than 1,200 branches and outlets across more than 70 countries and employs around 87,000 people. The bank was founded in the year 1969 in London.
The bank started its operations in Ghana in the year 1896 as Bank of British West Africa and served as the Central Bank of the Gold Coast in the pre-independence era until 1953 which makes it one of the oldest companies in Ghana. Currently, the bank operates a total of 27 branches in the country. The 2019 financial position of the bank’s operation in Ghana reported total assets of GHC7.62 billion, total liabilities of GHC6.45 billion, and a total shareholders fund of 1.17 billion (all in approximations).
Stanbic Bank Ghana is a subsidiary of the larger Standard Bank Group which operates in 20 countries in Africa and in 12 other countries across the globe.
Stanbic Bank Ghana started its operation in Ghana in the year 2009. In their 2019 annual report, it was reported that the bank’s total asset stood at GHC9.3 billion and a total equity of GHC1.3 billion
Zenith Bank Ghana is a subsidiary of Zenith Bank Plc, a Nigeria-based multinational financial services provider. The bank started its universal banking operation in 2005, offering top-of-the-line banking services to individuals and corporations across the country.
Headquartered in Accra, Zenith oversees 34 business locations (branches and agencies), as well as a number of POS terminals and ATMs. It is also one of the banks in Ghana providing mobile banking and real-time internet banking services.
The annual report of the bank for the 2019 year ended reported a total assets of GHC 6.691 billion, a total liabilities of GHC 5.572 billion with total equity of GHC 1.118 billion.
