Business News of Friday, 17 August 2018

Source: classfmonline.com

We'll meet GHC400m Minimum Capital Requirement – Heritage Bank

Heritage Bank building Heritage Bank building

The management of Heritage Bank has expressed confidence of meeting the December 2018 deadline for the GHS400 million Minimum Capital Requirement (MCR).

There are fears more local banks would lose their licence following the collapse of seven banks since August 2017. Two of them – UT Bank and Capital Bank – went bust in August 2017; and the remaining five: Sovereign Bank, The Beige Bank, uniBank, The Construction Bank and The Royal Bank, were fused together by the Bank of Ghana to form the Consolidated Ghana Bank (CBG).

It followed the June deadline for commercial banks to present their proposals to the Bank of Ghana for meeting the recapitalisation requirement.

About four banks are currently in talks to consider merging to meet the deadline.

Speaking to Class Business on this matter, CEO of Heritage Bank, Patrick Fiscian, said the bank is poised to meet the deadline for recapitalisation.

He said: “You’ll recall that the Bank of Ghana requested all banks to submit their capital plans at the end of June to provide insight into how far we’ve gone into our process to inject capital.

“Heritage Bank submitted its plans and I can tell you the central bank is quite satisfied with the progress we’ve made. We believe that well before the end of the year, we would have our capital in place.

“From the perspective of Heritage Bank, we are being guided by the timelines provided by the central bank and we would be working towards meeting that.”