Financial Services

Since the privatisation of state banks and the liberalisation of industry in the late 1980s, Ghanaian banks have increased in stature and number, and for much of the last decade they have enjoyed strong growth rates and large profit margins. The country’s lenders have maintained their stability, avoiding the domestic crises that have befallen...

While advanced economies generate the vast majority of insurance and reinsurance business, emerging markets are posting higher rates of growth. Complementing this underlying trend is a strong and expanding interest in catastrophic risk, which by nature tends to pertain to emerging markets. This is coming alongside fast-paced, sector-...

In recent years the most promising growth in the insurance industry has come from the low- to middle-income brackets via micro-insurance, which targets entities with lower-level earnings. According to a 2015 report from the National Insurance Commission and the German development organisation GIZ, gross micro-insurance premiums grew by 185%...

Regulators are aiming to use higher capital requirements as a means of encouraging consolidation in the Ghanaian banking sector, in a bid to repeat the success of neighbouring Nigeria. In 2004 the Central Bank of Nigeria’s then newly appointed governor, Charles Soludo, faced a weak and thinly spread financial sector that failed to meet the...

The proliferation of insurance companies in Ghana in recent years is indicative of the growth potential of the industry, but has also hindered its maturation. As with many financial sectors in Africa’s frontier markets, fragmentation has limited growth. Larger, heavily capitalised companies are needed to take on the scale of risk inherent in...