Cal Bank targets 2,000 agents nationwide

CAL Bank Limited is targeting to register more than 2,000 agents to operate under its agency banking initiative which has already been rolled out.

This is part of measures the bank is deploying to help drive financial inclusion and grow its fortunes to maintain its position as one of the top financial institutions in the country.

Consequently, the bank has constructed an ultramodern head office to support its product and service offerings, and also to help it chart a new course in the industry.

“This head office will be the last time the bank will construct brick-and-mortar office in the country. Instead, we will take the opportunity to leverage on our agency banking using cutting-edge technology,” the Managing Director (MD) of the bank, Mr Frank Adu Jnr, told the Daily Graphic at the commissioning of the new head office on May 22 in Accra.

He explained that the bank had already adopted cutting-edge technology to support its product and service offerings.

Technology has already enabled the bank to engage more than 150 agents across the country to ensure that more people, especially the unbanked, get access to financial services.

“We are planning to increase our agents from the current 150 to 2,000 to help complement the 29 branches of the bank,” the MD added.

Impressive piece of architecture

For his part, the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, indicated that the formal opening of the office building “is the start of a new exciting chapter of growth and innovation for Cal Bank”.

Describing the head office building as an impressive piece of architecture, he thanked the bank for being an integral part of Ghana’s economic story over the last three decades, adding that it had proven itself to be a solid bank.

He stated that the prudent measures taken by the Bank of Ghana (BoG) to save and sanitise the banking sector were beginning to yield positive results.

He observed that at the end of the first quarter of 2019, the banking industry’s performance in total assets, total deposits and net loans and advances, all saw positive growth.

"It is evident that the measures we took saved the banking industry from a very dire situation, characterised by the existence of several weakly capitalised banks, with balance sheets encumbered by a multitude of low-performing loans, pursuing bad business models with poor governance practices, and largely, non-existent central bank regulation,” he said.

Those measures, he said, saved not only the deposits of some 1.5 million Ghanaians, their businesses and the people they employed, but also minimised job losses in the banking sector.

Commitment

The Governor of the central bank, Dr Ernest Addison, stated that the commissioning signalled what a local indigenous bank could achieve with commitment and hard work by its dedicated workforce.