Ecobank Ghana has once again recorded very impressive financial performance on the back of a significant growth in digital transactions driven by investments and improvements in its digital channels to ensure smooth customer experience in a pandemic year.
At the bank’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) this year, Managing Director, Dan Sackey, noted that in the year under review, heavy investment into improving digital channels and call centre services resulted in an impressive 36% growth in digital transactions, as against 7 per cent growth in in-branch transactions.
It was therefore mainly on the back of digital transactions the bank emerged as the most profitable bank of the year 2021 in Ghana, with total revenue growing by 10% to GHS2 billion and profit before tax reaching GHS894 million on a 14% growth.
“The growth in total revenue was mainly driven by 13% increase in Net Interest Income to GHS1.5billion and 24% rise in Net fees and Commissions to GHS 317.6million,” the MD said.
Again, as a result of making its services available to customers via digital channels, the bank saw increased volumes of earning assets, funded by rather strong deposit growth of 12% to GHS13.2 billion, which was the industry’s highest for 2021.
It also closed the year 2021 with the largest loan book, which grew by 14% to GHS5.7billion, while remained very strong, with Total Assets growing by 12% to GHS17.93 billion, with Owners Equity rising 10% to GHS2.7billion.
Dan Sackey explained that even though 2021, like the year before it, was a challenging for customers, staff, shareholders and its communities due to Covid-19, Ecobank was still able to deliver on its mandate in pandemic year mainly by offering digital solutions to its clients to ensure their safety.
Indeed, during the year under review, all of Ecobank’s services and products remained accessible to the various categories of clients via its full range of digital channels.
“Our business clients, made up of corporate and retail banking customers, had access to our award-winning OMNIPlus and OMNILite Payment Platforms as well as over 40,000 GhQR and Point of Sale Terminals.
“We also offered our flagship Ecobank Mobile and Ecobank Online products to our consumer banking customers, expanded our reach through our over 2,000 Ecobank Xpress Points and 240 Automated Teller Machines located all over the Country,” he said.
He added that the bank has also upgraded and repositioned its Contact Centre into a multilingual and multicultural customer engagement centre that responds to and serves its customers around the clock 7 days in a week.
Customer-Centricity
According to him, in 2021, Ecobank particularly placed the customer at the heart of its business by emphasising Customer-Centricity, one of the new six corporate values of the bank – Respect, Accountability, Customer-Centricity, Excellence, Integrity, and Teamwork.
“Our staff are being continually sensitized to see everything we do from the point of view of our Customers, recognize them and tailor all our offerings to meet their needs, take responsibility, resolve customer issues at first contact, keep our customers informed and be accessible to them in an efficient manner,” he stated.
Dan Sackey said he is confident and proud of the fact that Ecobank has the best customer-centric employees in the market today, who are well trained, highly motivated, and passionately focused on serving customers.
Outlook
He said, as government implements measures to deal with the increasing inflationary pressures and its adverse impact on the macroeconomic environment, Ecobank will continue to support its clients to navigate this difficult period, while remaining optimistic of a recovery in the medium-to-long-term.
The MD said the bank will also continue to deepen its relationships with customers and provide them the needed support to grow their businesses.
“Our performance for the first quarter of 2022 has been encouraging and we expect the growth trend to remain positive but are mindful of the headwinds due to the current inflationary pressures and supply chain disruptions,” he added.
