Senior financial sector leaders have warned that the Bank of Ghana’s (BoG) landmark microfinance reforms, while necessary, will fall short without parallel investment in Ghana’s court system and a coordinated industry-wide response to organised fraud.
The warnings came at the Absa-UPSA Law School Quarterly Banking Roundtable VIII in Accra on Tuesday, held under the theme “Regulating Microfinance in the Age of Fraud: Restoring Confidence and Growth.”
Dr Seth Kwame Anani, Policy Lead at the BoG’s Financial Institutions Policy Department, used the platform to outline implementation details of the January 2026 reforms, confirming that all microfinance institutions face a December 31, 2026 deadline to meet revised capital thresholds. Existing institutions transitioning to microfinance bank status must raise a minimum of GH¢50 million, while new entrants must inject GH¢100 million. Institutions that do not comply must decide before June 30 whether to recapitalise, merge or exit the sector.
“The reform is not about shrinking choices,” Dr Anani said. “It is about designing the right institutional set that will have the right risk management framework so customers are safe and served very efficiently, with dignity and respect. When we have weaker institutions, vulnerabilities increase. It is a win-win reform situation.”
He said the BoG has invested in supporting infrastructure including a collateral registry and a sector intelligence platform for real-time cyber threat monitoring.
Akwasi Aboagye, Chief Executive of Bayport Savings and Loans, challenged institutions to take fraud more seriously at the leadership level, saying the threat had grown beyond what any single institution can manage alone. “A lot of fraud is done by organised crime syndicates. They know what they are doing and they are targeting every institution. Fraud is not just a small problem it cuts across all parts of the business,” he said. He called for a structured industry information-sharing framework to flag common fraud patterns before they migrate from one institution to the next.
The most pointed critique came from former Dalex Finance Chief Executive Ken Kwamina Thompson, who argued that strong regulation without court infrastructure is largely symbolic. “The Bank of Ghana is focusing more on regulations, which is nice. But the infrastructure around it nobody is talking about it. What is the point if you have a system that just says take it to court, because a lot of people think the case is going to be in court for 20 years?” he said. He called directly on the central bank to champion the establishment of specialised financial courts. “Unless we build those guarantees, we will be here in five years to talk about it again,” he warned.
