By Joshua Worlasi AMLANU
The Collateral Registry has cut transaction costs and boosted lender confidence, helping unlock financing for small firms despite lingering strains in Ghana’s financial sector, the Head of Regional Branch and Coordinating Office, Dr. Settor Amediku, has said.
Marking its 15th anniversary last week, the registry’s administrators credited its centralised electronic platform with making credit more accessible, especially for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) that lack traditional land-based collateral.
The platform allows borrowers to pledge movable assets, such as machinery, inventory, or accounts receivable, as security, creating a more flexible and transparent credit environment.
“The collateral registry continues to play a critical role in reducing transactional costs,” said Dr. Settor Amediku, who delivered remarks on behalf of the Bank of Ghana’s Second Deputy Governor, Mrs. Matilda Asante-Asiedu, during the celebration.
He said the registry has helped streamline collateral registration and search processes while expanding lenders’ risk appetite.
Since its establishment, the registry has grown from a limited operation into a key pillar of Ghana’s secured lending infrastructure. It now serves a wide range of financial players, including commercial banks, microfinance institutions, savings and loans companies, and more recently, fintechs and non-bank lenders. Regulatory support, notably the Borrowers and Lenders Act of 2020 (Act 1052), has further entrenched its utility in the lending ecosystem.
These institutional improvements appear to be having some impact on the private sector credit, which has been staging a notable recovery in 2025. In real terms, loan volumes reached GH¢92.2 billion by April, up from GH¢77.9 billion the previous year.
While rising interest rates, hovering between 32 percent and 35 percent, continue to weigh on commercial lending, especially for SMEs, analysts say the ability to use movable assets as collateral is lowering barriers and expanding the credit frontier for underbanked businesses.
Dr. Amediku also highlighted the registry’s role in fostering a more inclusive credit market, stressing its potential to integrate with digital identity systems, credit bureaus, and other real-time data sources.
“As our economy becomes more digitised, the demand for innovative credit solutions will continue to grow,” he noted.
Nonetheless, lending institutions continue to grapple with asset quality challenges. Ghana’s non-performing loan (NPL) ratio stood at 23.6 percent in April, up from 21.8 percent in December 2024. While headline figures are high, the effective NPL ratio, excluding fully provisioned loss-category loans, remains around 9 percent, reflecting efforts to clean up balance sheets.
Even so, market observers argue that without the cost-saving efficiencies introduced by the registry, lenders would likely be even more cautious. The registry’s digital infrastructure has helped mitigate information asymmetry, reduce verification delays, and ultimately, increase credit extension to segments long considered too risky.
The Bank expect that the next phase of evolution will focus on interoperability and deeper integration with Ghana’s digital financial infrastructure to support real-time, data-driven lending decisions.
