19 banks charge maintenance fee – BoG survey

Bank of Africa, GCB Bank, FBN and UBA are the only banks that do not charge service fees for maintenance of current accounts every month.

This means that 19 out of the 23 universal banks impose maintenance fees on current accounts per month.

This is applicable to retail, corporate and SME (small- and medium-scale enterprises) clients.

According to the Bank of Ghana’s Quarter 4 Survey of Bank Charges, Societe Generale’, Standard Chartered Bank and Zenith Bank require an initial deposit of GHS100 for opening a savings account.

First National Bank, GT Bank and Omni BSIC, however, did not require any initial deposit for opening a savings account.

However, consumers will need to keep a minimum operating balance of GHS100 at Standard Chartered Bank and GHS50 for Barclays, Fidelity, GCB Bank, Republic, Societe Generale and Stanbic Bank, respectively.

For Commission on Turnover (COT), Omni BSIC is the only bank that do not impose a charge. COT is a customer incurs for debit transactions (transaction involving withdrawals and/or operating cost to the bank) from his current account.

According to the survey, three different fees, including commitment fee (a fee charged by a lender to a borrower to compensate the lender for its commitment to lend); processing and arrangement fee (an administration charge made by lenders for arranging credit) and facility and insurance fee were imposed on loans/credit.

That was between October and December 2019 period.

For overdraft, processing & guarantee commissions were the charges imposed on the processing of the facility.

Bank of Africa and NIB charged the highest of 1.50 per cent for commitment fee for both retail and corporate clients.

First Atlantic, Omni BSIC, ADB and Societe Generale did not charge any commitment fee.