Lawrence Adu-Mante Managing Director of Commercial Bank of Ghana

Dubbed Best Bank in Ghana this year by Global Finance Magazine, Ghana Commercial Bank (GCB) is staying one step ahead of the competition by optimising its use of new technology.
Licensed as a universal bank, GCB is the country’s largest indigenous financial institution in terms of breadth of coverage and customer base. With the opening of new outposts this year, it now boasts 135 branches and 10 agencies, all connected to the bank’s wide area network. This paves the way for the development of new web-based products.

It is currently building a new bank complex on the campus at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi to serve the needs of students and the university catchment area.
The bank has moved to make long queues at its banking halls a thing of the past with its new expedited Royal Banking concept, which is designed to provide a service characterised by flexibility, speed and convenience for customers.

Internet banking is being fully implemented and the number of automated telling machines doubled from 50 to 100. The bank has also introduced an ATM Funds Transfer Option, a facility that allows customers to transfer funds from their accounts into a third party account with ease.

In August, it became the first bank in Ghana to acquire a principal certification for MasterCard business. Another recently introduced service is Moneygram, a collaborative initiative between GCB and MoneyGram International that enables customers to send money online to more than 100,000 locations in over 170 countries and territories online.

“We are offering more service within our international money transfer system in order to reach the Ghanaian diaspora which is becoming more widespread,” says Lawrence Adu-Mante, the bank’s managing director.

In order to maximise its advances in technology, the bank has been channelling more of its budget into human resources, hiring new graduates with experience in ICT.

Founded in 1953, GCB is 34 per cent owned by the government, with the rest in the hands of private individuals and companies. Mr Adu-Mante explains that being partly state owned means that “we do not operate like the multi-nationals that exist within the country. Due to the government ownership, we have a strong corporate social responsibility. We balance this with the challenge of making a profit, as we are accountable to our shareholders.”

The bank was established to provide banking services to facilitate economic growth within the country. “GCB has never wavered from that goal to date,” says Mr Adu-Mante. “Basically we are involved in every sector of the economy.”

The bank plays an important role in providing services for small, medium and micro enterprises in the agriculture, manufacturing, commerce and the services sectors, and is heavily involved in financing the cocoa industry. “GCB has always been a major player in cocoa financing for export,” says Mr Adu-Mante. “The agriculture sector is very important to us as it is provides such a large part of the Ghanaian economy.”

The bank is also a major financer of the importation of petroleum products, an area of activity it is stepping up. Last year it obtained a universal banking license enabling it to add investment banking, brokerage service and development banking to its services.