Rural banks urged to provide quality service to customers

Mr Samuel Twumasi Ankrah, a Manager at the ARB Apex Bank Limited, says banking presently was dependent on the provision of quality service to customers.

Addressing the 25th Annual General Meeting of the Kwaebibirem Rural Bank at Asuom, Mr Ankrah said the big banks continued to lure customers of smaller banks, such as the Rural and Community Banks (RCBs) through those quality services.

It was therefore important for the Kwaebibirem Rural Bank to address those issues by investing in training that would help the staff to improve on service delivery.

He said rural banks still had a lot more to do by way of organizational and operational restructuring, especially in the area of migrating from manual operations to embracing information and communication technology, effective deposit mobilization and credit administration, cost control and reduction.

Mr Ankrah said it was important to recognize the need for additional desks in the rural banking sector to cater for banking operations, information and communication technology, share registry management, reconciliation of transactions and accounts, micro-finance desk, internally audit, research and marketing as well as administration.

The units, he said would further strengthen the rural banking system and enhance public confidence in their operations.

Mr Ankrah said the computerization of RCBs under the Millennium Challenge Account was on course and the project which took off in July, 2009 would end by February, 2012.

Source: GNA