What a Load of Bankers
on Anthony Lovat in Bolgatanga (Ghana), 28/May/2011 09:06, 34 days ago
“80% of Ghanaians do not have access to financial services,” said the headline in September 2009. Surveys have consistently shown that the overwhelming majority of Ghanaians do not have a bank account. They keep their money in their mattresses.Internationally, banks have recently utterly abused the trust people placed in them. The managers of these institutions have revealed themselves to be greedy, irresponsible and in desperate need of tighter government regulation. This regulation is needed because banks provide a necessary basic service. We need financial services as much as we need educational, medical and police services. To be able to quickly and safely store, move and spend our money is yet another thing that we in the developed world take for granted.I remember the first time we walked into a Ghanaian bank. In September 2009, at the same time that the government was publishing the 80% figure, we entered Barclays Bank Osu Branch in the commercial and financial centre of Accra.With all the same Barclays logos, uniforms, colour schemes and general paraphernalia that you see in the UK, we were disappointed to find that the level of service was not what we were used to. We approached a young man in a suit sitting behind a desk. He was busy copying numbers from one sheet of paper to another sheet of paper.“Excuse me,” we asked politely.The young man ignored us.“Hello, can you help us please?” we asked again.Without taking his eyes off his page, the man lifted his left hand to silence us and continued copying his numbers, carefully and self-importantly trapping each meticulously drawn digit inside its respective square box. Eventually, he finished his line of numbers, leaned back in his office chair to mop his brow and looked at us as if to ask what the fuck we wanted.“Good morning,” we said, politely. The man grunted and made small circles with his hand, encouraging us to skip the formalities and hurry up.“We would like to open an account please. We were wondering what we needed to...”“Speak to that man over there,” he interrupted, absently waving his hand towards a desk of people before returning to his number copying.The second man was a little more friendly. He used to work in the Barclays Bank in Bolgatanga, he told us, but he didn’t like the place. It is too underdeveloped, he explained. There’s nothing to do. The weather is terrible. People are uneducated and don’t understand how to use a bank. Many people came to the bank who can’t even write their names, he told us disparagingly. He was forced to manage the bank in Bolga in order to gain a promotion and return to Accra. No, he didn’t learn the language. Not even one word. No, he won’t go back. Not ever.We discovered what we needed to open an account (VSO had given us the wrong information) and returned later with the relevant documents. Our friendly Bolga-hater had disappeared. Being British, we joined a queue. The queue didn’t move. After twenty minutes we were rescued by a security man who directed us to a side room. We were given a form to fill in but not a pen. Did anyone have a pen we could borrow? We asked the clerks, the security man and members of the public. Eventually the manager of the entire bank was called from his smart office to reluctantly lend us his gold pen. There were various different options to tick depending on what sort of account we wanted. We asked what each one entailed and were told to tick the ‘current account’ box. It turned out that this is the one with the highest bank chargesand the lowest interest rates.We wanted to transfer a few thousand pounds from Barclays UK to Barclays Ghana. We wanted to move our money within what is the same organisation - the same bloody bank. We were promised that this financial service would be instant. We were lied to. The money disappeared for a week - arriving in our account having been converted to Ghanaian currency with a rate of exchange that was well short of the market figure.Despite the long wait and the inefficient, informationally deficient, dishonest and occasionally rude service, we left the bank, after just a few hours, with a joint bank account and bank cards in the post. We had achieved what we had wanted. Perhaps this bank was difficult, we wondered, because it is in busy, bustling Accra. Perhaps in Bolga the service will be more provincial, cordial and effective.It’s not. To enter Barclays Bank in Bolga is like entering a time warp. Step into its portal at ten o’clock in the morning and you will not escape until the afternoon. Simple banking procedures such as paying in a cheque or withdrawing cash mean waiting in a line that often stretches out of the door. I avoid the place like the plague.Several months ago, Laura was sick of the way the current account interest rates were so low compared with Ghanaian inflation and wanted me to do something about it. We have lost significant money to Barclays since being here in this manner. I grumbled, delayed, made excuses, procrastinated and was eventually ear-bashed into going to the bank and opening a savings account. I was in the bank for the entire day. After eight hours of my life that I will never see again, the process was still incomplete. They told me to come back after the weekend but I was so sick of this‘financial service’ being offered to me that I gave up. We’ve since made do with the crappy account we opened in Accra.In what way is this banking better than a mattress? At least you don’t have to queue for hours to retrieve money from a mattress. No wonder 80% of Ghanaians choose to reject this type of financial service in favour of their mattress.I suspect that the number of Ghanaians using these financial services would be even lower if the government didn’t pay its salaries through the banking sector. Every month, towards the end of the month, you can see hundreds of people queuing outside all of Bolga’s banks. They crowd around the doors, waiting for them to open in the morning. They queue for hours - the better part of a day - to receive theirfinancial service. They are all government workers - nurses, teachers, civil servants, policemen, firemen - trying to ‘pick’ their salary. They do not want to keep their money in the bank. They want to extract their entire monthly salary and stuff it under their mattresses.Sadly, the banks offer such a poor service that even this basic service - the withdrawing of your own money - is not provided for. The most common excuse is‘link failure’. I have spoken with so many teachers and education service officers who are told every month that, despite the phone network working perfectly everywhere else in town, the network link between Bolga branch and Accra is down. They return the following day and the day after that. Itoften takes weeks before the money is made available.Veronica, my science officer colleague, knows someone who works in the Agricultural Development Bank. She has been told, although she’s not supposed to tell anyone, that the bank literally runs out of cash every month around salary time. The cashiers are instructed to lie to their customers - tell them that there is a link failure. This buys some time. They need to wait for enough people to deposit money back in the bank beforethey can then start giving it out again. This shambles is repeated month after month. The local economy depends on government salaries and this terrible financial service must be seriously damaging the development of the area.In the UK, to order something through the post can take minutes. Thanks to our developed financial services, we can simply put our card details onto a website, type our house number and six-lettered postcode and wait for the thing to arrive.Mr Edward supplies science equipment for schools from his small but well-stocked shop in Accra. I called him on the phone and listed all the items I needed - it totalled nearly 2000GHc (£900). How can I send him the money, I asked. Mr Edward told me his bank details and so, anticipating a long wait, I went to Ghana Commercial Bank - the nationalised bank - with an envelope stuffed with 20GHc notes. I also brought a book.Ghana Commercial Bank (GCB) is a modernist monolith that stands in the centre of a concrete lake of a car-park with the director’s reserved parking space the only occupied parking bay. Its utilitarian and utterly unattractive edifice dominates Commercial Street. It lacks any decor apart from the flag of Ghana hanging limply from its flagpole and bold lettering stuck to the front of the building, several of which appear tohave fallen off, spelling out the bank’s name.Barclays Bank has been operating in Ghana for only a few years. A privatised bank, it appears to have attracted Bolga’s well-off. Its car park is often stuffed with Land Cruisers and its queue often seems to be a place for suited businessmen to network. The bank charges presumably keep the riff-raff away.Whereas Barclays provides financial services for the rich, nationalised GCB provides financial services for the poor. Little old men dressed in dirty smocks stood in the line alongside skinny young market women and grubby mechanics. The cashiers move at the same lethargic speed of all Ghanaian public sector workers. They prioritise‘friends’ who push to the front of the queue. They take extended lunch breaks. They provide a frustratingly poor financial service.The main hall of GCB was stuffed with such people - all of whom were in a giant queue that snaked around the hall like a random conga line. I approached a young intelligent-looking man standing in the queue and told him what I wanted to do. He showed me where to pick a form from and where to join the end of the conga line. Two-and-a-half hours later, I reached the front of the queue. A financial service that would take seconds in the UK took an entire morning in Ghana.One answer could come from the mobile phone companies.‘Mobile money’ is the newest idea to hit Africa and has been wildly successful in Kenya and Uganda. Bypassing the traditional financial services, people can send money through their phones via codes in text messages. Take the code to any mobile money dealer and they will give you your cash up toa certain sum. It provides ordinary Africans, those 80% who reject the greedy and ineffective traditional financial services, with a way to move and invest money quickly and easily. MTN, Vodafone, Tigo and the other big mobile operators in Ghana are just introducing the scheme here. I believe that,like the mobile phone revolution, it will transform the economy making it far more fluid and dynamic.As organisations that deal exclusively in money, banks will, almost by definition, bend over backwards to help the rich whilst simultaneously ignoring the poor. We see this in the UK. Whereas we mere mortals must make do with our regular high street banks, the super-rich enjoy offshore havens, tax breaks, personal bankers and special rates of interest. Similarly, whereas the British grumble about bank opening times, queues that lasts fifteen minutes, internet banking and Visa cards, regular Ghanaians must put up with such poor service that they usually choose their mattresses.Financial services are currently a force for increasing inequality in the world. Like the money changers of the New Testament, they need condemning for the moral vacuum within which they operate. If we, as professionals providing educational and veterinary services, recognise our obligations to humanity, why is it that financial professionals ignore the inequality in the world that they help to entrench?As Thomas Jefferson, the author of the American Declaration of Independence said,“If [we] ever allow banks to control the issue of [our] currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless”.Perhaps the 80% of Ghanaians that store their money in their mattresses recognise the inherent greed within financial services. It will only be when the banking sector develops the humility to recognise its responsibilities to humankind that the world in general and Ghana in particular will develop.