Foreign banks control over 60% of banking assets – BoG Governor

Foreign-owned banks now control more than 60 percent of the assets of Ghana’s banking industry. The Bank of Ghana (BoG) says that level of concentration may not serve the country’s strategic interest, and it wants locally owned banks to take a bigger share of the market.

Governor of the BoG, Dr Johnson Pandit Asiama, made the disclosure at a press briefing in Accra on Thursday, after the 132nd meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC).

“The current regime where over 60 percent of total banking assets accrue to foreign-owned banks, from a strategic point of view, that may not be very, very optimal. And so going forward, we will want to see our local banks increase their participation in the sector,” he said.

With total industry assets at GH¢500.2 billion as of August 2026, the Governor’s figure means foreign-owned banks hold more than GH¢300 billion of the country’s banking assets. Locally owned banks, both private and state-owned, together hold less than GH¢200 billion.

The figure also shows how far local banks have fallen behind in less than a decade. In 2017, state-owned banks held 16.6 percent of banking assets and domestically controlled private banks held 32.3 percent, according to research published in the journal *Africa*. Together, Ghanaian-owned banks then held close to half of the industry, while foreign banks held about the other half. Today, foreign banks control well over three-fifths.

The shift happened largely during the 2017 to 2019 banking sector clean-up, which fell almost entirely on locally owned banks. The BoGrevoked the licenses of nine universal banks during the exercise, all of them indigenous: UT Bank, Capital Bank, UniBank, The Royal Bank, Beige Bank, Sovereign Bank, Construction Bank, Premium Bank and Heritage Bank.

UT Bank and Capital Bank were the first to go in August 2017, and their deposits and selected assets were transferred to GCB Bank. A year later, UniBank, Royal, Beige, Sovereign and Construction were collapsed into the state-owned Consolidated Bank Ghana (CBG). Government issued a bond of GH¢5.76 billion to retire the debt of those five banks alone.

Responding to a question that 11 of the 13 banks that failed over the past two decades were local institutions, Dr Asiama said the reasons given by the BoG at the time of their resolution pointed largely to weak risk management.

“A lot of them had to do with the risk management framework that they had. And that is why currently we are emphasizing the risk management framework of banks,” he said. He added that the BoG’sBanking Supervision Department has issued a number of guidelines to strengthen risk management across the industry.

The regulator’s findings at the time went beyond risk management. UT Bank and Capital Bank were cited for poor corporate governance, including interference by non-executive directors in daily operations, the mixing of the banks’ activities with those of related holding companies, and high executive pay. In the case of Beige Bank and Construction Bank, the BoG said the banks had used fictitious capital to obtain their licenses.

The clean-up coincided with a directive raising the minimum capital requirement for universal banks from GH¢120 million to GH¢400 million by December 2018. It was the largest single increase in the industry’s history. A group of indigenous banks petitioned for a five-year phased timetable to 2022, arguing that the BoG had given local banks more time than foreign banks in previous recapitalization exercises. The request was not granted, and the December 2018 deadline stood.

The dominance of foreign banks shows up clearly at the top of the market. Four of the six largest banks by operating assets in 2025 were subsidiaries of foreign banking groups, according to PwC Ghana’s 2026 Banking Survey. They were Ecobank, with 10.8 percent of industry operating assets; Stanbic, with 8.6 percent; Absa, with 7.2 percent; and Zenith, with 6.1 percent. The state-controlled GCB Bank remained the single largest bank, with 12.3 percent of operating assets, 12.37 percent of deposits and 17.8 percent of loans and advances.

The earnings pattern is similar. Of the five banks that recorded the highest profit before tax in 2025, four were foreign-owned. GCB led with GH¢3.16 billion, followed by Ecobank with GH¢2.98 billion, Absa with GH¢2.74 billion, Stanbic with GH¢2.61 billion and Guaranty Trust Bank with GH¢1.56 billion. The industry as a whole posted profit before tax of GH¢21.87 billion.

Nigerian banks alone form a substantial bloc. The Ghanaian subsidiaries of First Bank, UBA, Guaranty Trust Bank, Access Bank and Zenith Bank recorded a combined pre-tax profit of GH¢1.20 billion in the first quarter of 2026. For their parent groups, Ghana is a major source of earnings. Zenith Bank’s foreign operations, which include its Ghana subsidiary, generated 26.3 percent of the group’s pre-tax profit in 2025, up from 13.5 percent a year earlier, according to Fitch Ratings.

Foreign control extends to lending. Foreign-owned banks registered GH¢14.12 billion, or 71.1 percent, of the GH¢19.9 billion in secured credit recorded by banks in the second quarter of 2026, according to the BoG’s Collateral Registry. Ghanaian-owned banks registered GH¢5.74 billion. That was a smaller base, but a 112.4 percent increase on the GH¢2.70 billion they recorded a year earlier, suggesting local banks are regaining ground in credit markets.

Ghana’s position contrasts sharply with that of Nigeria, where the Central Bank of Nigeria’s policies helped local banks build scale. A 2019 study published in the Africa Journal of Management found that privately owned Nigerian banks held 94 percent of that country’s banking assets. This placed Nigeria second out of 180 countries for the share of bank assets held by local banks.

The concentration of banking assets in foreign hands carries implications beyond market share. Profits and dividends earned by foreign-owned subsidiaries are repatriated to parent groups, adding to demand for foreign exchange. Credit decisions at those subsidiaries are also shaped by group-level risk appetite set outside the country.

A stronger local banking sector is seen as key to channeling more credit to Ghanaian businesses and retaining more of the industry’s earnings in the domestic economy.

Dr Asiama said the BoG wants the gains from the industry’s current growth to shift towards local institutions. “If at all, what we want to see is a greater amount of those assets should be held by our local banks. For me, if there’s anything I want to see with that trend, it will be to see more of our local banks holding those assets as we go forward,” he said.

“We need to do some work to ensure that our local banks, our indigenous banks, are able to thrive and are able to compete,” the Governor added.