While commending the savings and loans sector for their significant role in the economy at the 12th Annual General Meeting of the Ghana Association of Savings and Loans Companies (GHASALC), Mrs. Addo Awadzi disclosed that “at the end of the first quarter of 2022, total assets of the specialized deposit taking institutions sector was about GHS16 billion. Of this, savings and loans sub-sector contributed 35.1 percent discount of these total assets.”

“The S&L sector had also disbursed about GHS3.4 billion in net loans to private enterprises also in the same period. You serve a client base of 7.3 million in Ghana, that’s about a fourth of the population of Ghana so you’re quite a significant player in our financial system and in our economy as a whole,” she added.

Security against fraudulent activities

Meanwhile, the Ghana Association of Savings and Loans Company has pledged its commitment to ensuring safety and security for the funds of its customers.

This comes on the back of the rising cases of fraudulent activities in the financial sector.

Recent data from the Bank of Ghana proved that the value of losses recorded as a result of fraud in banks and specialized-deposit taking institutions in 2021 jumped by 144 percent to clock 61million cedis compared to 25 million cedis recorded in the previous year.

In a reaction to this, Executive Secretary of GHASALC, Tweneboah Kodua Boakye, noted that it remains a priority for his outfit to implement measures to prevent such happenings in the savings and loans sector.

“It’s not encouraging that we should have an increase in fraudulent activities but in any case, we are in an era where people are continuously looking for ways get into the systems and as we expand, the space is prone to these kind of risks. But we would continue to make sure that we improve on our operations to make sure that customers’ funds are very safe with an S&L.”