The total assets of Ecobank passed the one billion dollar mark at the end of September 2001, Mr William Thomas, Deputy Managing Director of Ecobank said at the opening of a new branch of the bank at Tarkwa on Monday.

This brings to five the branches of the bank in Ghana and the 60th in the West African sub-region.

Mr Thomas said the growth of the bank was not limited to its assets alone but its operations as well adding: "Currently Ecobank operates in 12 countries in West Africa including Senegal, Cameroon and Burkina Faso."

He said in addition to standard banking products, the bank also offered financial advisory services, structured finance solution to co-operate clients and various investments and pension schemes with Western Union Money Transfer being its newest service.

Mr Thomas said Ecobank would very soon launch other card-based products that were designed to ease the burden of voluminous cash transactions on customers.

He said the Tarkwa branch of the bank was fully networked and using the computerised and integrated online banking system, customers of Ecobank branches in the country could conduct banking business at Tarkwa.

2The same facility would be very soon extended to cover West African sub-region when a group-wide proprietary V-Sat satellite telecommunications system is installed," he said.

Nana Wireko-Ampem Opoku, Tarkwa Branch Manager of Ecobank, said a prospective customer could open an account with an initial deposit of 500,000 cedis and the frequency of withdrawal would determine the interest rate.

However, he said the bank did not charge commission on turnover.

Ecobank, headquartered in Lome, Togo started operating in Ghana 12 years ago but was founded in 1985 as a private banking and financial service group focused entirely on the West African sub-region.

It is owned by approximately 1,400 individuals and institutional shareholders including ECOWAS Fund, Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz, Al-Saud's Kingdom Africa Holdings and West African Growth Fund, based in Abidjan.