President and Chairman of Group Nduom, Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom has revealed that GN Bank will begin operating as a savings and loans from Tuesday 8th January 2019.
According to Dr Nduom, although the bank tried to merge with other banks in the days leading up to the deadline for the Bank of Ghana’s new minimum capital, management realized that the merger will result in some changes which was not good for the bank and its customers.
“We attempted to merge with some other banks but we didn’t have the right synergies, some don’t want to do what we do. We are a retail bank we like to deal with small account holders others want to do big transactions. That’s not our style that’s not our purpose so there are changes that would have come that wouldn’t have been good for us or our customers or our employees, so the merger thing didn’t work.”
He noted that GN Bank has requested that the Central Bank sends a representative to guide them in the transitioning process.
“We asked for someone to be brought to GN Bank to make sure that the transition process is smooth so they will appoint someone to come and be an advisor to make sure that the changes that we’re supposed to make are made,” he stated.
Dr Nduom added that even though its universal license has already been replaced with that of a savings and loans, it will take six months for bank to complete its transition into a savings and loans entity.
He said, “there’s a six month transition period where we make all sorts of different arrangements”.
He added that customers of GN Bank are in support of the decision to become a savings and loans entity.
The Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Ernest Addison announced on Friday that it has downgraded GN bank to a savings and loans status because it was unable to meet the deadline set for banks to recapitalize from GH¢120 million to GH¢400 million.
The central bank gave the banks up to 31st December 2018 to resuscitate their capital base but at the end of the grace period 23 out of 34 were able to recapitalize.
Other banks including Premium and Heritage had their operating licenses revoked and merged with Consolidated Bank Ghana Limited.
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