Banks have recovered swiftly to support coronavirus fight – Andani

The President of the Ghana Bankers Association, Alhassan Andani, says the banking industry has recovered swiftly from the deep challenges experienced over a year ago.

According to him, the majority of the indicators, including improvement in liquidity and non-performing loan ratios, now shows that the banking industry is moving in the right direction.

This, he says, has been captured in the 2019 financial statements of the banks that some have published so far in the dailies.

“The 2019 results, which most of us have already published and you will see in the newspapers shortly, has been a resounding success; whether it is confidence in the financial services sector as evidenced by clients coming to leave monies, deposits with banks have gone up significantly across the board, whether it is confidence in the sense that the real sector feels that they can be supported by banks as evidenced by our loans and advances portfolio that has gone up significantly, whether it is evidenced by governance and risk discipline”, he told PMS Express on Joy TV.

Further, Mr Andani, who is the Managing Director of Stanbic Bank Ghana, said: “If you look at all the critical risk factors, if you look at the major performance indicators – customers’ confidence in depositors, customer confidence in absorbing risky assets and banks’ willingness to do so, it is happening at a much faster and better rate.”

“We are deeply grateful for the pain that we’ve gone through. We’re grateful, particularly, for the pain that the Ghanaian public have gone through.”

Mr Andani also spoke on the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on the Ghanaian financial sector and the economy as a whole.

According to him, the banks will support the government to keep the economy running in these difficult times, prioritising health and agriculture.

“We all have the disaster planning scenarios that say that when this happens this will happen; we have a disaster planning for this situation like this. But the question is: how long will this go or whether our worst-case scenarios can play out or is it going to play out even more severe?

“At the moment, we will support health and health delivery, ensure that we consolidate payments and get people wherever they are keeping safe at home, they can get critical payments and critical essentials to them.”