At the GCB Platinum Thought Leadership Conference in Accra, he said the biggest currency for operators in the banking and financial sector was credibility built on core values and principles.

The one-day conference brought together bankers and subject matter experts from the fields of finance and economics. Present at the event were President of the Council of Foreign Relations Ghana, Ambassador D. K. Osei; a former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Prof. Ernest Aryeetey; the Head of the Economics Department of the University of Ghana, Prof. William Baah-Boateng and the former Country Senior Partner of PwC Ghana, Felix Addo.

It featured discussions and presentations on various topics in the baking and finance sectors.  

“His insights were on the topic, “financial conduct, and the political economy in Ghana and other emerging markets”. 

Ethical breaches

Dr Opoku-Afari said ethical breaches such as shareholders and directors of banks taking huge loans with no intention of paying, acquiring banking licences by misrepresentation were some of the issues that led to serious challenges within the banking sector, hence the financial sector clean-up. 

The exercise which cost the taxpayer in excess of GH¢20 billion was at aimed at ensuring orderly exit of insolvent institutions to protect depositors' funds and also ensure the safety and soundness of the banking sector which was in a state of distress.

It saw a reduction in the number of banks from 34 to 23, whilst 347 microfinance institutions, 15 savings and loans and eight finance houses had their licences revoked.

Dr Opoku-Afari urged players in the industry to take lessons from the financial sector clean-up to create a credible and sustainable banking environment for the public.

He added that since the clean-up, the central bank has enhanced its regulatory regime, sharpened monitoring tools, established ethics and investigations office at the BoG to ensure those issues did not occur again.

Ethics 

The Chief Executive Officer of the Chartered Institute of Bankers, Robert Dzato, highlighted the importance of ethics in public financial institutions towards stable financial systems. 

With banking evolving over time, he said the financial sector clean-up was a good example for the sector to think about ethics more seriously. 

He mentioned politically connected individuals who took loans with no intention of paying, non-performing asset recovery trust, poor credit administration, fraud in creative accounting and poor corporate governance as some of the issues that led to insolvency leading to the financial sector clean-up.

To address these issues in the future, he said ethics education and financial literacy must be made core to businesses and must be embedded, adding: “otherwise nothing will change”.

He called on the regulator, operators and educators to embed ethics in their business mode. 

“We need ethics more if we have to chart a path forward towards a more resilient and sustained future,” he said.