‘Be wary of financial institutions offering outrageous interest’
The Treasurer of Stanbic Bank Ghana, Mr Alhassan Musah, has urged customers and businesses to be wary of financial institutions that promise “outrageous interests” on their deposits and investments.
He said the recent development in the financial sector showed that such institutions were prone to collapse.
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He explained that the reforms in the financial sector had revealed that some institutions promised high interest rates to attract customers but ended up recording high non-performing loans (NPLs).
These NPLs, he said, led to the collapse of the institutions in question.
This, he said, should serve as a guide to customers when they were choosing financial institutions to bank with.
“Do not be deceived by the high interest rates of 30 per cent to 40 per cent that are promised.
“At the end of the day, they will give you something that you do not need and get their interest.
“Some of these things happen from time to time, so make sure you choose the right bank,” he said at the sixth annual Stanbic Bank Trade event series in Accra.
Minimum capital
Mr Musah described Stanbic Bank as “still a best quality bank with a track record of over 150 years devoid of issues.
“Our capital is about three-to-four times the minimum capital requirement. With all these, you can get what you need,” he said.
The Head of Personal and Business Banking at Stanbic, Nana Dwomoh Beneh, said the bank had deep expertise relating to business banking, and that a key aspect of trade was import and export, which most of their customers were engaged in.
Thus, he said the event was to bring their customers together in line with the bank’s stated objective of being partners with customers and fuelling their growth.
“The feedback has encouraged us to do more. We are pleased that our products and services are useful to our clients.
“We have been focused on growth of customers, notwithstanding the environment,” he added.
Trade event
The Stanbic Trade series is organised annually to basically bring industry experts together to educate the bank’s customers and inform them about trade trends and to offer solutions to some of their challenges with respect to trade finance.
“Related to trade finance is forex and other related activities.
“We have seen the need to do this on an annual basis because of the changes in international trade perspective, hence the need to bring people together to update them on what is happening and get them abreast and offer solution that will help them,” the Head of Transactional Products at Stanbic, Mr Kodwo Arizie, said.
Some of the topics discussed at the event included an overview of economic trends, business planning, new regulations on trade and how customers can look within their individual businesses and streamline them to take advantage of trends in the market.