John Awuah, CEO, UMB
The directive of the Central Bank to commercial banks to increase their minimum capital requirement from GH¢120 million to GH¢400 million by December 2018 appears to be mounting pressure on some players.
This is because this time, the Central Bank is not just looking at regulatory capital but also unimpaired capital.
Addressing senior media practitioners recently in Accra, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of UMB, John Awuah, denied repports that UMB was finding it difficult to meet the requirement.
“I want to emphatically state that UMB is in full position to meeting the capital requirement ahead of the deadline of December 2018. In doing this, we have decided not just to look for money. We are looking for strategic partners. One of the leading investment banking firms in Africa – Renaissance Capital – is helping us, as partners, to look for a partner, who would be a strategic fit to all the things that we do at UMB.”
As a premier merchant bank that is helping to build Ghana’s private sector, Mr Awuah gave a snapshot of its achievements in 2017.
“We started 2017 with the UMB PPP incubator centre and the UMB centre for businesses, which we opened at Madina in Accra. The UMB Centre for businesses is our approach as a bank to dealing with small and medium-scale and even big enterprises by creating a stand-alone platform that provides a one-stop shop financial service for our clients.
“What we have done by creating the UMB centre for businesses is to provide a similar forum for our corporate clients and small and medium-scale enterprises customers to have a franchise that they can visit devoid of all the back and forth from the head office branch communication.”
Commenting on the introduction of UMB Visa cards too, Mr Awuah said it took 10 working days for customers to apply for a UMB visa card sometime last year, but presently applicants could have it in five minutes and begin transacting business.
He said UMB last year built branch offices in Kasoa, Madina, UPSA, Sakaman and Tamale, adding that “in the coming few days, we will be going to Sunyani to open a flagship branch in the region as well.”
He also spoke about the UMB Mobile App, the bank’s innovative way of banking.
“It is a different way of banking while on your bed, washroom, at the dining table, driving in traffic, in school, in the office and wherever you find yourself to have that opportunity to be able to bank with us.”
This year, he said, UMB intends to partner the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) to bring a world-class media practitioner to train business reporters and key media personnel to help produce quality and world-class business reportage.
By Samuel Boadi