Banks urged to focus investment on operations to enhance efficiency

Ghanaian banks have been urged to focus their investment on improving their operations to enhance efficiency and effectiveness. 

The Senior Partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Ghana, Vish Ashiagbor, who made the call at PwC’s Banking CX Breakfast Forum in Accra, said Banks needed to do more to enhance customer experience

“I think that banks need to look at their stakeholders, understand what exactly they want and adjust their ways to suit them. It is not as easy as it sounds because the stakeholder environment is huge and I think that is where the challenge is.”

His comment followed key findings from the maiden edition of the Ghana Banking Sentiment Index (GBSI).

The Index reveals that in terms of operational net sentiment, Ghanaian banks recorded a score of -23.5%, which was better than UAE’s, UK’s, Saudi Arabia’s, and Kenya’s respective scores, but worse than South Africa’s 2023 score of 9.7%

Ghanaian banks, however, scored 21.8% in terms of reputational net sentiment when it comes to banks in the country.

This is better than scores obtained by the banking industries in the UK (2023), and the UAE and Saudi Arabia (2024). It was, however, worse than the South African and Kenyan markets.

“So some of the things we are speaking about such as speed, predictability, knowledge of employees,..so Banks need to be clear of what the changing needs of their customers so that they can change their internal processes are and be able to adjust, because what,” Ashiagbor said.

Co-developed by PwC and DataEQ, the Ghana Banking Sentiment Index (GBSI) provides a gauge for the overall customer sentiment towards the

banking industry. The production of the index follows a robust methodology that entails collecting and rigorously analysing social media conversations relating to the good and poor experiences that social media-active customers have with their banks.

The maiden edition of the GBSI was produced from analysing almost 62,450 conversations on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter), with these conversations having taken place from 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024.

Thirteen of the 23 banks operating in Ghana during this period were covered in the very first edition of the GBSI.

Exclusions from the index are due to insufficient mentions of a bank in the sampled conversations on these two social media platforms, which are, by far, the most popular among customers.

The two firms found that 77% of the social media conversations tracked are reputational in form, mostly driven by the marketing departments of the banks covered and influencers associating with the banks’ brands.

The remaining 23% of the social media conversations are classified as operational, mostly spontaneous praise and complaints by customers relating their experience with their banks.

Details presented along with the summary results of the index show the experiences the industry and individual banks covered are giving customers in the areas of products, customer service, digital interactions, account administration, transactions and pricing, and physical infrastructure.

PwC and DataEQ noted that the five areas of analysis that attracted the most negative sentiments from customers were account administration (-93.2%); customer service (-84.2%); transactions (-82.5%); digital experiences (-75.1%); and physical facilities (-63.8%).