Preparations underway for 14th Ghana Banking Awards

Corporate Initiative Ghana (CiG), organisers of the prestigious Ghana Banking Awards, has commenced preparations towards the execution of the 14th Ghana Banking Awards.

The Ghana Banking Awards, assesses the performance the 28 Universal Banks in the country, with the use of both quantitative and qualitative set of data on the banks.

While the quantitative data is publicly available through the mandatory publication of the banks’ financials in the press, the qualitative data is based on a survey conducted from the information provided by the banks themselves.

To ensure fairness and transparency of the Approach & Methodology used in the assessment, a Technical Committee is formed, which is populated by a maximum of two representatives from each of the 28 qualifying banks.

A meeting to kick-start preparations towards the 14th Ghana Banking Awards takes place at 9am on Thursday 9th April at the African Regent Hotel, which will be attended by the CiG working Group, the Technical Committee members from all the 28 Universal Banks as well as the main event statisticians, Ernst & Young.

According to the Chief Host and Chairman of the Awards Planning Board, Nana Otuo Acheampong, the meeting will afford the participants the opportunity to discuss the Approach & Methodology document to be adopted for this year’s survey of bank customers and also determine other parameters to emphasise the transparency of the Awards.

“We are noted for excellence and we will continue to do what is required of us to ensure that the superb brand name we have established for the banking industry is not compromised, hence the involvement of the Technical Committee members to discuss and agree on a common methodology to be used for the awards”, he said.

Nana Acheampong urged the management of all the banks to ensure that they are represented at the Technical Committee level to afford them the opportunity to make inputs into the Approach & Methodology document.

“I wish to prevail on the banks to ensure that they send their representatives and also submit their data to enable CiG commission the customer survey of the banks”, he said.

He further stated that the customers of the banks deserve to know how their banks are performing and “it also behoves the banks to accord their customers the opportunity to comment qualitatively on their operations in terms of certain categories such as customer service and other related banking services”.

Nana Acheampong added that inasmuch as some banks may fail to submit their data for the qualitative analyses, they will be quantitatively assessed since published financials will be used.

Meanwhile, at an earlier meeting to formally close the 13th Ghana Banking Awards of which Access Bank annexed the coveted ‘Bank of the Year’ Award, the event statisticians identified some challenges to include insufficient time allocation for the customer survey; late submission of bank data by some banks and management of participating banks not well informed by their Technical Committee representatives about developments at the various meetings.

With regards to the submission of data for instance, the report noted that “only one bank, Access Bank, submitted data for all the categories”.

On the way forward it was recommended that the data collection should be timelier, adding that: “Gathering of data and surveys could be performed quarterly and responses averaged to provide a more representative view of customers across the year under review”.

“Management of participating banks should be more informed by their representative of the entire process in order to provide more quality information and data to enhance their performance”, CiG added.