As part of the 125th anniversary celebrations in Ghana, the Standard Chartered held a Digital Banking, Innovation and Fintech Festival at the Kempinski Hotel in Accra dubbed “Shaping the next phase of Ghana’s Financial Technology Landscape for the 21st Century” which brought together both local and international Fintech players, seasoned experts and practicing Fintech innovators to engage and share insights on how to adopt, leverage and scale digitisation, innovation and technology within the financial sector.
At the event, the Vice President of Ghana, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia stated that, in this era of fourth industrial revolution, digital technology is the most robust and efficient way to drive the economy forward and it will fast track economic growth and prosperity, improve public administration, revenue mobilisation, trade facilitation and reduce unemployment and tackle corruption significantly.
Vice President Bawumia continued saying technology is becoming one of the key drivers of the productive capacity of economies worldwide from new ways of providing services, to new job models and to production in factories and digital innovation was spearheading and expanding opportunities for economic growth in a way that had never been before.
“That is why we do not take this national responsibility lightly. The gains and rippling effects will be significant. “We believe it is a more robust way to run this country and the vehicle that will accelerate the rate of growth.“It is the hub of financial and technological progress in the sub-region,” the Vice President emphasised.
The Minister of Finance, Mr Ken Ofori-Atta who was also present, in his statement said, the country is poised to be forefront of Africa’s digital economy and would leverage on digital platforms to accelerate economic growth. He underscored the need for banks and financial institutions to commit a percentage of their financial resources towards developing entrepreneurial skills of the youth.
Dr Ernest Addison, Governor of the Bank of Ghana, on his part, said the Central Bank passed the Payment Systems and Services Act 2019(Act 987) to regulate the digital financial ecosystem and deal with challenges that may come up and urged the stakeholders in the financial sector to prepare themselves to embrace the digital financial ecosystems for financial inclusion.
Ms Mansa Nettey, the Chief Executive Officer of Standard Chartered, who doubles as the President of Ghana Association of Bankers, in her welcome remarks, said as part of the Bank’s corporate social responsibility had supported small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) and empowered the youth, women and virtually impaired persons with financial solutions.
The Bank, she said, had also provided advisory services to SMEs and its customers to equip them to take advantage of the digital economy to promote Ghana’s aspirations of becoming financial hub in the sub-region.
The hybrid event was held from 3rd to 4th November,2021 and delved into the impact and opportunities of the increasingly robust and digitized financial ecosystem and the lessons we can learn from Ghana’s digitization journey so far.
The SC Digital Banking, Innovation and Fintech Festival was organized in collaboration with the Central Bank of Ghana (BoG), SC Ventures and Enterprise Singapore. Standard Chartered has been one of the leading adopters of Fintech in the financial community and the Fintech Festival was another indication of how much importance they place on it.