Expanding financial inclusion: Advans Ghana's client base more than doubles to 160,000

Over the past five years, Advans Ghana has more than doubled its outreach while keeping a predominantly female customer base. Building on that momentum, the institution launches Mmaa Mpuntuo on 30 September.

Advans Ghana  now serves 159,693— nearly 77,000 additional traders, farmers and shop owners in five years, at an average of about 14% a year.

Women account for almost 60% of clients – a majority built over eighteen years of lending, not a recent initiative 

The  institution opened in 2008 with a single branch at Accra Newtown in the Greater Accra region. It now runs 21 branches across nine regions in Ghana and has disbursed over 250,000 loans worth more than GHS4.5 billion since inception.

Reach is built on branches and relationship officers. Digital extends it. The MyAdvans GH app and the Mobibank USSD service let clients check balances, move money and make repayments from wherever they trade — no closing the stall for the morning, no fare needed to the nearest branch, no queue. For a trader whose income depends on staying open, that flexibility is the point.

Clients are taking it up quickly. Across 2025, digital transactions grew 48% and transactions made outside a branch rose by 90%. That is also why the institution holds ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification for information security — when banking moves onto a phone, protecting client data stops being back-office work.

Performance has tracked client growth. By June 2026, loans reached GHS607.5m, up 31% year-on-year, deposits rose 37% to GHS474.4m, and half-year net profit reached GHS38.94m — a 68% increase.

For the everyday entrepreneur, those numbers translate into tangible realities: working capital for a market trader to stock up ahead of demand, equipment for a local manufacturer to scale output, or working capital for a service provider looking to create more jobs, and a micro loan to a rural farmer to put food on our table and sustain local and rural livelihoods. Board and oversight

Advans Ghana is led by Managing Director and CEO Guillaume Valence and Deputy CEO Kwame Owusu-Boateng, with an eight-member management committee and a Board chaired by fintech executive and chartered marketer Eli Hini.

It sits within the Advans network, a pan-African Group operating in Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Nigeria, Tunisia and Côte d'Ivoire from a head office in France.

The institution holds the Client Protection Certification at Silver Level — independent verification that clients are priced transparently and protected from over-indebtedness.

These achievements provide the foundation for Advans Ghana's next chapter: combining stronger digital capabilities with greater proximity and support for entrepreneurs across Ghana.

“ Our growth demonstrates that financial inclusion and strong performance reinforce each other. Our ambition now is to combine high tech with high touch, expanding access while remaining close to entrepreneurs and growing responsibly and sustainably.
”
— GUILLAUME VALENCE, Managing Director & CEO, Advans Ghana
 
 
Nearly six in ten clients are women

Women are are almost 60% of the active client base. In 2025 alone, Advans Ghana disbursed GHS400 million to women-owned businesses. Mmaa Mpuntuo: the next GHS20 million

On 30 September, Advans Ghana launches Mmaa Mpuntuo — Twi for women's progress — a GHS20 million fund of targeted working capital for women running big-micro and small businesses. It is funded by Development Bank Ghana and was developed with CapPlus  through the Mastercard Foundation FIRST+II Programme.

The money comes with more than money: free business coaching and mentorship, financial literacy training, and access to networks and markets. More than 150 women have already been through the institution's financial literacy training.  The same pattern, applied inside

Advans Ghana employs over 680 people, and 85% of them work in branches across Ghana. Women make up 43.6% of staff and 52% of the 38-strong talent pipeline being developed for senior roles. In 2025, each employee received an average of 19.7 hours of training, 108% of the year's target. Climate: cutting the footprint, covering the client

Advans Ghana's climate roadmap runs on two tracks: reducing what the institution consumes, and protecting clients when disaster strikes.

Covering the client
Small businesses in vulnerable markets carry risks no balance sheet shows — floods, fires, the loss of everything in a night. Advans Ghana's answer is a cover built directly into the loan.

When fire destroyed more than 7,000 shops at Accra's Kantamanto market in January 2025, the institution paid GH¢8.4 million to 227 affected SME traders through embedded microinsurance run with Turaco Inclusive and underwritten by Enterprise Insurance Ltd. Outstanding debts were cleared automatically. Cash was released to restart trading. No trader filed a claim. No one waited for an assessor.

A further GHS2.5 million in restart loans went to nearly 60 traders, with a GHS20,000 donation  to the Kantamanto Traders Union for reconstruction. The arrangement dates to a partnership established in 2010 — fifteen years before the disaster that tested it.

The institution goes one step further. In 2024, it launched a flash-flood awareness campaign for clients in flood-prone Kaneshie and Accra New Town, with practical guidance on protecting businesses against heavy rains, and donated 15 pallets and 45 parasols to traders at risk of flooding and extreme heat at  Odorna market in Accra. Cutting the footprint

The other track begins with what the institution consumes. Advans Ghana used about 5,839 reams of paper in 2023. Digitisation cut that to 1,830 reams in 2024 — a 69% reduction in a single year.

More than 5,000 trees have been planted in four years, this is part of a group-wide Advans effort to cut carbon footprint by consuming less and replacing what it consumes. MMAA MPUNTUO LAUNCHES 30 SEPTEMBER 2026

A starting capital fund of GHS20 million in targeted working capital for women-led businesses — with free coaching, mentorship and financial literacy training in partnership with Development Bank Ghana and CapPlus

Visit any of our 21 branches  ·  0800 355 355  ·  www.advansghana.com  ·  Yens Gyamfi Deputy Chief Business Development Officer  -  0501 547 132 

— Graphic Online