President of the Chartered Institute of Bankers – Ghana, Rev Patricia Sappor, has said banks in Ghana have are embracing the new normal in their operations in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.

She said banks are taking steps to scale up digitization in its operations to make it easier for customers to transact banking businesses without walking to the banking halls.

She told TV3 in an interview that: “I believe that all the banks have positioned themselves for an unexpected change. In the past 24yrs most of the banks had positioned themselves in the digital space. Customers were very aggressive, how to navigate their way through accessing the services of the banks on the digital platforms.”

Recently, a Banking Consultant Nana Otuo Acheampong, said the coronavirus pandemic has changed the face of banking across the globe.

He explained that banks are now investing heavily in digitization following the pandemic.

“Banking is a security-conscious industry, in that we take the confidentiality of customers so seriously…so right now what the banks are doing is they are investing a lot in encryption and verification of identities so that they will be able to combat the unforeseen. So banking is not going to be the same as it was before December 2019, he told Joy News.

Mr Otuo Acheampong added that “The process of digitization started some years ago, but the pace, we didn’t think it was so urgent until this pandemic dawn on us, then we realized that now it is urgent and we’ve got to fasten the pace because we felt there was social capital in getting people to work as a team in the office only to realize that you don’t have a choice but to let people work independently from home.

“So it wasn’t something that was anticipated but as far as technology was concern it was something that has started before and what COVID-19 has done is to catapult it into a different phase altogether.

“Now the Artificial Intelligence which is assisting the digitization in banking has been fast-tracked and now a lot of things are happening remotely instead of physically being in the banking hall or the banking premises,” he said.

He added: “The changes in the banking sector started years ago, it might have been slow but the pandemic has effectively turbo-charged the growth of the internet and it’s being used more, now the returns that are made to the regulator has gradually moved away from paper-based to electronic-based.

“There are hundreds of reports that have been digitized. Changes have been ongoing but the pandemic has catapulted us into the future.”