The Ghana Association of Banks (GAB) has launched a structured programme to make ethics certification mandatory for every employee across the country’s banking sector, as the industry confronts a 33 percent rise in staff-linked fraud cases documented in the most recent central bank report.
GAB Chief Executive John Awuah announced the initiative at a board-level ethics training for directors of member banks in Accra, framing the drive as an industry survival issue rather than a regulatory formality.
“As banks, our currency of trade is trust. If we lose the trust of the banking public, we have lost our business,” Awuah said.
Under the programme, all banking staff will be required to complete annual ethics certification through an online training platform developed in collaboration with the Chartered Institute of Bankers (CIB) Ghana. A separate fraud-focused certification module will run alongside it, covering employees at all levels of each institution.
The Accra event, which brought together board chairs and non-executive directors, marks the opening of a wider rollout that will include a nationwide public awareness campaign on fraud and integrity in the coming weeks.
Awuah stressed that the programme’s scope is deliberate. “We want everybody to be in the same boat when it comes to assurance of integrity,” he said, adding that the industry must close the gap between front-office exposure and back-office accountability.
The scale of the problem driving the response is significant. The Bank of Ghana’s (BoG) 2024 Fraud Report recorded 16,733 fraud cases across banks, specialised deposit-taking institutions (SDIs) and payment service providers (PSPs), a five percent increase on the previous year. The total value at risk rose 13 percent to approximately GH¢99 million. Staff implicated in those cases jumped from 274 in 2023 to 365 in 2024, a 33 percent increase that GAB described as deeply troubling.
“One fraud is one too many,” Awuah said, adding that banks intend to escalate enforcement through dismissals, prosecutions and, after due process, public disclosure of individuals found culpable.
The ethics drive also intersects with the sector’s elevated non-performing loan problem. Awuah noted that while declining interest rates are expected to ease repayment pressure, delays in the courts and inefficiencies at regulatory bodies such as the Lands Commission continue to hamper credit recovery.
“We cannot lead economically and have default rates around 19 percent when other jurisdictions are doing 4 to 6 percent,” he said.
GAB President Kwamina Asomaning, in remarks delivered on his behalf, called on directors to translate the training into active governance practice, arguing that long-term sector strength depends as much on ethical discipline as on financial performance.
