Guarantee Trust Bank Ghana Limited Saturday night dislodged Zenith Bank (winners for 2008) and emerged Ghana's Best Bank for 2009, winning the coveted award at the 9th Ghana Banking Awards.
It was a total haul as the bank swept seven additional awards including Best Bank in IT and Electronic Banking, Best Bank in Product Innovation, and Best Bank in Short Term Loan financing.
The other categories in which Guarantee Trust Bank won were Best Bank in Retail Banking, Best Bank in Customer Advisory Services, and Best Growing Bank for the year 2009. GT Bank also won 1st runner-up in Customer Care.
First Atlantic Merchant Bank also put up impressive performance in the year, obtaining the first position in Best Bank in Medium Term Loan Financing and Best Bank in Customer Care. Notching up from its 2008 position of 1st runner-up in Long Term Loan Financing, First Atlantic also won the Best Bank in that category in 2009. It won 2nd runner-up in three categories – Best Bank in Retail Banking, Best Bank Corporate and Best Bank in Short Learn Financing – and one 1st runner-up positions – Best Bank in Trade Financing.
The event was held at the Accra International Conference Centre and was impressive as usual. Ghana music legend A B Crentsil added a touch to the ceremony with impressive music that got many of the industry players who converged at the ceremony tapping their feet and those who were old enough remembered what they call the good old day.
The Banking Awards, which is an annual event, has as its core objective, fostering healthy competition amongst banks operating in the country and ultimately improve the quality and efficiency of financial services delivery to Ghana's banking population.
Messrs KPMG, the reputed research institution, was responsible for data collection and analysis.
Story by Malik Abass Daabu/Myjoyonline.com/Ghana
Full list of Award Categories and Winners
Many people from all walks of life were there
Bank of the Year: This Award goes to the Bank with the highest weighted scores for the customer survey, corporate social responsibility and financial performance.
Winner: Guarantee Trust Bank Ghana Limited
Customer Care: This Award goes to the bank with the most satisfied customers for the year under review. Banks are assessed based on factors including friendliness, professionalism and efficiency in dealing with customers, convenience of access to services and quick attention and response to enquiries.
Winner: First Atlantic Merchant Bank
1st Runner-up: GT Bank
2nd Runner-up: Trust Bank
Advisory Services: This Award goes to the bank that best understands its customers' needs and sees it as a duty to continuously assist its customers improve on the management of their accounts and ultimately their companies. Banks are assessed based on factors including proactiveness of bank staff in identifying and proposing alternative solutions to clients' needs; and ease of accessing advice by customers when required.
Winner: GT Bank
1st Runner-up: Merchant Bank
2nd Runner-up: Cal Bank
Trade Finance: This Award goes to the Bank that delivered trade finance products and related services to its clients most efficiently for the year under review. In addition to bank data collected from participating banks, corporate customers of the banks assess their performance based on factors including: the ability of the bank to provide trade finance services for import and export, the speed of approval of trade finance facilities and the speed of approval of delivered facilities.
Winner: EcoBank
1st Runner-up: First Atlantic Bank
2nd Runner-up: Standard Charted Bank
Short Term Loan Financing: This Award goes to the Bank that is perceived by its clients as being the most efficient in the delivery of Short Term Loan Facilities i.e. Loans with repayment period of less than one year. For this category, participating banks are assessed with data from the corporate and retail surveys only. The factors that form the basis for the assessment of this category include: availability of short term loans, flexibility in arranging emergency short term loans, ease of access to short term loans and speed of delivery of these short term loans once the approval is given.
Winner: GT Bank
1st Runner-up: Prudential bank
2nd Runner-up: First Atlantic Bank
Medium Term Loan Financing: This Award goes to the Bank that is perceived by its clients as being the most efficient in the delivery of Medium Term Loan Facilities for loan facilities with repayment periods of between one and five years." For this category also, participating banks are assessed with data from the corporate and retail surveys only. Banks are assessed based on factors including: availability of suitable medium term loans, speed of delivery of approved facilities to the client, and flexibility with security options and terms of payment.
Winner: First Atlantic Merchant Bank
1st Runner-up: International Commercial Bank
2nd Runner-up: Trust Bank
Long Term Loan Financing: This Award goes to the Bank that provided the most efficient access to long term loans in the country for loans with repayment period of over 5 years." Factors assessed include availability of suitable long term loans, speed in the delivery of approved facilities and flexibility with security options.
Winner: First Atlantic Merchant Bank
1st Runner-up: International Commercial Bank
2nd Runner-up: Trust Bank
IT and Electronic Banking: This Award goes to the Bank whose IT Infrastructure provided the most efficient and reliable access to its products and services by its customers for the year under review. For this category, assessment of banks was based solely on data from the retail and corporate surveys. More detail is provided in the next section about the changes to the methodology for this category.
Winner: GT Bank
1st Runner-up: Merchant Bank
2nd Runner-up: Cal Bank
Product Innovation: This Award goes to the Bank that introduced the most innovative products for the year under review." For the assessment of this category, both bank data and customer (both retail and corporate) data were used. Factors considered in the assessment included relevance of the new products to the customers; product availability irrespective of location in the country first, and then the world as a whole; whether the products were entirely new to the market or were already on the market but had been significantly modified.
Winner: GT Bank
1st Runner-up: Ecobank
2nd Runner-up: ADB
Competitive Pricing: This Award goes to the Bank with the most competitively priced services for the year under review. For this year only bank data was used in assessing participating banks across factors including: interest rates on short, medium and long term loans; foreign currency pricing and trading; cost of maintaining accounts with the bank, interest on term deposits and bank charges on domestic banking.
Winner: SG-SSB
1st Runner-up: ADB
2nd Runner-up: GCB
Corporate Social Responsibility: This Award goes to the Bank that is assessed to be the most Socially Responsible Bank for the year under review. A panel of judges is constituted by KPMG, the event statisticians to review information obtained from the banks regarding programmes financed by the banks with the aim of improving the quality of life of their staff and the community at large.
Winner: Standard Chartered Bank
1st Runner-up: Zenith Bank
2nd Runner-up: Fidelity Bank
Best Growing Bank: This Award goes to the Best Growing Bank for the year under review. Selected growth factors are assessed based on information received from the data collected from the bank survey and the audited financial statement of the banks.
Winner: GT Bank
1st Runner-up: Fidelity Bank
2nd Runner-up: Ecobank
Best Bank in Financial Performance: This Award goes to the Bank that achieved the best financial performance during the year under review." The category is also assessed based on bank data alone.
Winner: SG-SSB
1st Runner-up: UBA
2nd Runner-up: International Commercial Bank
Best Bank in Retail Banking: This Award goes to the Bank that scores the highest weighted aggregated scores for all of the categories assessed by the retail customers. The weightings are based on a ranking of all the categories by customers during the survey.
Winner: GT bank
1st Runner-up: Merchant Bank
2nd Runner-up: First Atlantic Merchant Bank
Best Bank in Corporate Banking: This Award goes to the Bank that scores the highest weighted aggregated scores for all of the categories assessed by the corporate customers. The weightings are based on a ranking of all the categories by customers during the survey.
Winner: The Trust Bank
1st Runner-up: Unibank
2nd Runner-up: First Atlantic Merchant Bank.
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