Ghana Commercial Bank is planning to expand its operations into the West African countries

The Managing Director of the Bank, Mr Ray Anselm Sowah made the revelation while speaking at the ‘Facts behind the Figures’ programme on the Ghana Stock Exchange.

According to him, the bank has decided to diversify and was looking to boost non-funded interest. It will hence give more details of the plan later in the year.

He said, “We are also looking at the sub-region. We have an agenda of moving into various countries, and we are prosecuting that agenda. We do hope that we will make investments into other countries and that will inure to the benefit of people to have the opportunity of going out to learn new things and to teach people what they have learnt here.”

The Bank is also exploring with a foreign partner to form a joint venture to provide insurance products.

Mobile and digital banking

Mr Sowah said the Bank would rely heavily on safe, secure and convenient mobile and digital banking to drive the agenda of bringing banking to the doorstep of the people.

“We want to let people from all walks of life, especially the un-banked to have access to this banking in a way they have never had before. We have a mobile banking wallet, which is coming out shortly and in this, we are going to have a refreshing progress,” he said.

The bank will launch its Mobile wallet, Internet Banking with trade solution and mobile application all by July 2019 while its Agency Banking would launch in December 2019.

The banking landscape is changing and competition is no longer restricted to only the banks but clearly, the Telcos are in growing ascendancy because they have a contemporary stage of hard digital platforms, and so they have access to significant pool of money.

The bank’s strategy, therefore, is to rope these transitions on to its digital platform and bring it into the high levels of financial integration by offering a wide range of financial services and opportunities over time.

“You may look at the Telcos and think that they are in competition but to us, they are potential partners, and we are going to use them at different levels of the banking spectrum,” the Managing Director said.