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Best Bank: Standard Chartered |
Banking in Ghana is getting competitive all of a sudden. There are now 24 banks, up from 15 in only a couple of years. That’s mainly because Nigerian banks are expanding into a country they know with a language they understand. There are now five Nigerian banks in Ghana. However, they have a way to go before they can start matching Standard Chartered’s grip on the financial scene. Under the leadership of Ebenezer Essoka, the bank, which has 19 branches in Ghana, refocused its attention on both wholesale banking and consumer banking. On wholesale banking it broke its clients down into four main groups: global corporates, such as Coca-Cola and Unilever; commodity corporates; local corporates and financial institutions. These areas showed double-digit income growth. Standard Chartered also picked up the mandate to manage the $810 million foreign exchange requirements of the Cocoa Board, the country’s largest foreign-currency earner.
On consumer banking its propositions for small and medium-sized business, many of which were derived from experience in Singapore and Hong Kong, transformed the market.