BoG regulations must recognise specialized banks – NDK boss

The Chief Executive Officer of NDK Financial Services, Oko Nikoi Dzani, is appealing to the Bank of Ghana to identify specialized banks and provide regulatory frameworks to support their operation.

He believes the reason many specialized banks like the Agriculture Development Bank, National Investment Bank provide little attention to their core customers is due to the erroneous tag on them as universal banks.

Speaking at the Achimota ‘Speaks ‘2’ forum,’ Mr. Dzani recalled the period in the country’s history when there were many specialized banks that aided development.

“The system used to be this; commercial banks and what they called specialized or development banks. Bank for Housing was there, NIB was there even Cooperative Bank was specialized, Merchant Bank was also identified as such.

“Then came the regulator coming in and talking about Universal Banking license; once you do that, you put everybody on the same platform and mind you each bank has a shareholder, people are always looking at the bottom line,” he said.

He believes that the moves bring unfair competition among the banking fraternity and discourages others from specializing funds to certain sector to aid economic growth.

Many of the above mention specialized banks have either collapsed, been acquired or struggling.

“When you have specialized banks, you look at instrument like taxes; tax systems. If it is Agric Bank, what can we do that people have cheaper access to source of funds from that,” he said.

The second edition of the Achimota speaks forum brought together old students of Achimota School.

It is part of events to mark its 90th anniversary celebrations of the school.

The event took place at the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences in Accra. It was on the topic; Vision 2030: The Role Of Industry, Business & Entrepreneurship. It was under the chairmanship of Akora Kwame Pianim and the keynote speaker was Akora Martyn Mensah. The panel was moderated by Akora Carol Annang and the panelists were Akoras Kofi Fynn, Karen Akiwumi-Tanoh, Ken Ofori-Attah and Oko Nikoi-Dzani.