Finance Minister, Dr. Amin Adam has directed the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department to pay ₵700 million to aggrieved customers of various defunct institutions.
The aggrieved group comprises about 2,221 depositors of collapsed investment banks, commercial banks, Savings and Loans companies, and microfinance institutions.
It will be recalled that since 2017 the Bank of Ghana embarked on a comprehensive banking sector reform, resulting in the collapse of about 16 universal banks. While some banks had their licenses revoked, others merged due to their inability to meet the GH¢400million minimum capital requirement.
As part of the clean-up, the BoG also revoked the licences of 23 savings and loans and finance house companies, and 386 microfinance institutions. In a response to the failure of some fund management companies to pay clients their funds, SEC in November 2019 revoked the licences of 53 firms for violating investment rules.
Efforts are ongoing to pay the affected customers and depositors of these distressed financial institutions. The Ministry of Finance has spent billions of cedis on the financial sector resolution process. Earlier in the year, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in his State of the Nation address before Parliament categorically stated that all depositors of S&LCs and microfinance institutions – including DKM which collapsed in 2015 – would receive 100 percent of their deposits, subject to a thorough validation exercise.