Capital Bank excels at 15th Ghana Banking Awards
Fast growing indigenous bank, Capital Bank, swept three awards at this year’s Ghana Banking Awards. The bank was adjudged the Best Growing Bank, Best Bank in Deposits & Savings and Best Bank in Household/Retail Banking at the 15th edition of the awards held in Accra.
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Capital Bank’s successes at the awards, which was organised to reward excellence in the banking industry, comes after the bank was ranked eighth at the 2016 Ghana Club 100 awards for the banking category and 25th in the club of 100 most prestigious companies in the country.
Commenting on the successes chalked by the bank in the year, the Managing Director of Capital Bank, Rev. Fitzgerald Odonkor, said being recognised for an excellent performance barely years after becoming a universal bank was an indication that the bank was on track to achieving its strategic goal of being a tier one bank in less than five years.
“The year 2015 was quite volatile with sharp increases in utility tariffs, depreciation of the Ghana Cedi, especially in the first quarter of the year, high interest rates, high inflation rates and the adverse effects of the country’s energy crisis,” he said.
Pursuing growth
Rev. Odonkor said 2016 witnessed a flurry of various strategic initiatives aimed at accelerating Capital Bank’s growth trajectory. This include the launch of the V-man campaign in March aimed at encouraging a savings culture by giving customers free cash to open bank accounts.
Innovation and Technology has been critical to Capital Bank’s growth trajectory from inception and this culminated in Capital Bank being the first financial institution to make it possible for customers to deposit cash into their bank accounts through their mobile phone, using its SpeedPay solution.
The SpeedPay solution, which was relaunched this year, has evolved beyond a cash deposit solution and can now be used by both customers and non-customers to make payments online through various platforms.
Capital Bank has also partnered Allied Oil to make it possible for customers to purchase SpeedPay Vouchers at any Allied Oil filling station.
“We believe that one of the challenges many businesses and individuals face is the limitation of not being able to bank their cash after normal banking hours. Therefore, the partnership with Allied Oil and other distributors is to practically extend our banking halls to over 80 outlets nationwide and banking hours to a minimum of 18 hours,” Rev. Odonkor stated.
Projects on the line
Capital Bank is also in the process of deploying over 38 sophisticated ATMs that allow customers to do interbank and intra-bank funds transfer from their Capital Bank Account to any bank through the Ghana Instant Pay platform and also through the bank’s internet banking platform.
The bank is also expanding its branch network by extending presence to 22 locations by the end of 2016.
Capital Bank is set to launch new ultra-modern branches at Labone, Airport, Achimota and Harper Road in Kumasi.
As part of the bank’s new corporate strategy, Capital Bank has restructured its business units in order to give critical attention to key market sectors. “We believe that to achieve our goal of being a tier one bank in less than five years, we must restructure our business units to focus on various market segments to maximise our ability to churn out more customised solutions with speed and precision”, he added.