COMPUTERISATION OF RURAL BANKS BEGINS (PAGE 28)

The Association of Rural Banks (ARB) Apex Bank has assured rural and community banks that the long- awaited computerisation under the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) will commence before the end of July.
The Managing Director of the Apex Bank, Mr Eric Osei-Bonsu, who gave the assurance, urged rural banks to consider merging their operations in order to cut down cost of the computerisation.
He said but for the support of the MCA, it would have been more difficult to undertake the project.
“It is in the light of this challenge and the financial outlays involved in these innovations that we deem it prudent for rural banks to consider the possibility of mergers, instead of each bank trying to survive on its own,” he said.
He said under the project, all rural banks would be expected to log on to a central database system which would be hosted at the Apex Bank Head Office in Accra through a wide-area network.
Mr Osei-Bonsu urged rural banks to strengthen their internal controls to ensure that their operations were carried out in an orderly manner and consistent with the best practices in the banking industry.
He also charged the boards and management of the rural banks to put the necessary structures in place to identify and mitigate the incidence of risk which might adversely affect attainment of their objectives.
He said with more than 60 per cent of the country’s population living in the areas, there was the need for the rural and community banks to take stock of their achievements and chart the new way forward for further improvement.
The managing director said with the discovery of oil in the region, business would boom, adding that if the banks positioned themselves well, it would be to their advantage.
He said with the computerisation programme, e-zwich, which was being managed by the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement System (GhIPSS), was a convenient and secure way of accessing and making payment.
“Therefore, it is our hope that all rural and community banks will be open to this electronic payment and settlement system with the biometrics verification process that allows card holders to deposit, withdraw, receive salaries, make payments, check balances, as well as make third party payments,” he said.
He said the current manual system of clearing cheques would be replaced with a cheque codeline clearing (CCC) system which was an electronic-based clearing system.
Mr Osei-Bonsu said under the manual system of clearing cheques, all representatives of banks met at a point to physically exchange cheques on a daily basis.
“Under the CCC, cheques will be scanned and images transmitted electronically to the clearing house with a clearing cycle of two days,” he said.
The managing director said within a short time, the two-day cycle would give way to same-day clearing and all clearing zones in the country would be merged into one for effective and efficient service delivery.
He said under the same computerisation system, the automated clearing house would be used to handle bulk electronic credit and debit items without images where instructions from an organisation’s funds and salaries could be transferred to its employees.