In the last three years The Bank of Ghana, led by its new Governor Dr Ernest Addison, has dramatically transformed through policy and banking sector reforms, from closing failed banks to winning the Central Bank of the Year in 2020.
As Dr Addison explains, by revoking licences of weak and insolvent institutions, and a revamp of the regulatory framework to stabilise and strengthen the sector.
“Our banks are now well capitalised, liquid, solvent, and resilient to liquidity and credit risk and well-positioned to support Ghana’s economic growth agenda”, he said while accepting the Central Bank of the Year award.
The task of cleaning up Ghana’s banking sector and restoring confidence in the banking system was a significant challenge.
“Following the clean-up, which was completed in August 2019, we focused our attention on strengthening our regulatory framework to address gaps and weakness identified and making our supervisory structures and processes more robust while strengthening the capacity of our supervisory staff”, says Mrs Elsie Addo Awadzi, Second Deputy Governor, Bank of Ghana.
Alongside the bank’s management and expert teams, technology was a significant driver of change.
A fully integrated financial surveillance system was key to strengthening the Bank of Ghana’s regulatory framework and increasing efficiencies.
The Vizor SupTech Platform, called ORASS (Online Regulatory and Analytical Surveillance Software) by the bank, enables the regulator to consolidate and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the data it collects and ensure consistency across departments.
The Central Bank now has a single portal to collect prudential data from banks and deposit-taking institutions. It also centralises the data from all the departments into one solution, which will improve their reporting and analytical capabilities.
The bank also uses Vizor, now part of Regnology, to streamline the management, review and approval of licence and authorisation requests from reporting entities.
The platform “helped us to manage our prudential data collection and the licensing of financial institutions. Our regulated entities can now upload their data automatically via API, decreasing the amount of human interaction when submitting data.” Michael Mensah, Director of ICT, Bank of Ghana.
The Bank of Ghana has already realised significant benefits through the use of our supervisory solution.
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