Rural and Community Banks (RCBs) have been urged to institute Information Communication Technology (ICT) Security Policy to ensure that risks associated with the implementation of ICT products are reduced to the minimum.

Mr Kwadwo Aye Kusi, the Managing Director of ARB Apex Bank, said this over the weekend in a speech read on his behalf at the 13th Annual General Meeting of the Builsa Community Bank held at Sandema in Builsa North of the Upper East Region.

He said with the current pace of development in ICT there was no doubt that RBCs would assume additional risk and new challenges adding that to minimize the risk, there was the need to adopt effective risk management steps to deal with any eventuality.

The Managing Director who commended the Builsa Community Bank Limited for its outstanding performance for the 2010-2011 year entreated the Management and Staff of the bank to deepen their micro finance businesses to empower them improve upon their overall results.

He also appealed to the Bank to put a premium on good customer service saying today’s banking depended on the provision of quality service to the customer.

“It is therefore important for your bank to address the issue by investing in the training programme that will enable your staff to improve upon service delivery. You must endeavour to build a good cooperate image for yourselves to ensure the loyalty of your customers and patronage of your products”, he said.

Mr Kusi said to boost investor confidence in the rural banking sector plans are far advanced by the ARB Apex Bank with its partners to establish a unit to manage share issues for RCBs including the payment of dividends and other related services .

He said with the current reorganization of the pension scheme in Ghana his outfit was in the process of creating a special unit to provide custodial services for RCBs tiers one and two pension contributions.

He said the ARB Apex Bank and DANIDA had instituted a merger fund to assist RCBs who intended merging and saying it was better to merge and render services to customers than to stay alone and collapse as a business entity.

Mr Ayaric Avabe Pascal, the Board Chairman of the Bank, said the bank would intensify its share capital mobilization to provide the needed funds for its operation, maintain an effective risk management framework that would identify, assess, monitor and control operational, credit and other risks that that the bank may be exposed to.

The bank, he said, would also continue to provide quality service to its clients and to build a strong human resource base to bring about quality service delivery to customers.