BoG invests in electronic surveillance software to aid analytical advisory – Governor

Governor of the Central Bank has said the Bank of Ghana has invested in a new electronic surveillance software to support the analytical advisory role of the bank.

According to Dr Ernest Addison, the state-of-the-art software will aid in capturing supervisory data from regulated banking and financial institutions accurately and prevent the high incidence of misreporting by banks.

Speaking at a virtual conference organised by the GIMPA Faculty of Law on Thursday, August 6, the Governor said; “In addition, the software will enhance the analytical capacity of the central bank’s supervisory team and help with more effective reporting of supervisory concerns for appropriate and timely interventions.”

Ernest Addison added that the central bank has also increased resources to its various departments that regulate and supervise the financial sector in the wake of the financial sector clean-up exercise in 2017.

As part of its efforts to restore confidence in the banking and specialized deposit-taking sectors, the Bank of Ghana (BoG) embarked on a clean-up exercise in August 2017 to resolve insolvent financial institutions whose continued existence posed risks to the interest of depositors.

The clean-up saw the revocation of licenses of 9 universal banks, 347 micro-finance companies, 39 micro-credit companies or money lenders, 15 savings and loans companies, 8 finance house companies, and two non-bank financial institutions.

The move by the central bank was a comprehensive assessment of the savings and loans and finance house sub-sectors carried out by the BoG in the last few years after it identified serious breaches.