The Ga Rural Bank has held the 30th edition of its annual meeting in Accra.
The purpose of the meeting, dubbed ‘Poised for Growth and Growing Stronger with Resilience’, was to present the bank’s annual report for 2021 on performance and also with the aim of sharing with shareholders and stakeholders the long-term value the bank intends to create.
Addressing the audience, Board Chairman of Ga Rural Bank, Fred Tetteh, emphasised the bank’s commitment to firmly upholding a transparent and accountable corporate governance framework, and ensuring that business decisions will be made in a transparent and fair manner in accordance with time-frames.
“Evidently, the Audit, Risk and Compliance Committee (ARCC) is to ensure that we remain agile in responding to changing and volatile banking and financial market landscape conditions. We will remain true to principles of strong governance by adopting best practices according to guidelines in the Bank of Ghana’s ‘Corporate Governance for Rural and Community Banks’.
In an interview with B&FT, Mr. Tetteh revealed that loan defaulters have been among the bank’s major problems.
He indicated that about 60 percent of loan-receivers end up not paying all the loan they took, which made the bank involve the services of some law firms to help retrieve the monies.
“Even though we have not been able to retrieve all debts, a larger percentage has been collected so far,” he noted.
Mr. Tetteh however added that even with measures being put in place by the Ministry of Finance and Bank of Ghana, there has not been any panic-withdrawals by clients.
The bank also appointed a new board member, Victor Easmon, who is currently with Phoenix Health Insurance as Operations Manager.
Mr. Easmon is an investment banker with over 20 years’ experience in financial services, spanning credit administration, banking operations and fund management, risk management, operations management, business continuity and project management.
He expressed joy to be selected as part of the board, and also congratulated pace-setters of the bank for doing a wonderful job in managing the bank, and said he intends to do his best to help grow the company with his acquired experience.
“I am hoping that with the experience I have gathered over the years in the financial industry, I will be able to add my quota to raising the bank to where it should be. Ga Rural Bank is one of the top rural banks, and I expect that in the coming years we will be among the top-tier as well.”
