The Managing director of afb Financial Services, Arnold Parker, has hinted that his outfit is looking to invest more into researching in the mobile space.
During the company’s facts behind the figures session at the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), Arnold Parker said “we would continue to invest into research in this space, so we can fully understand and be able to deploy services that are required to ensure that we can improve lives and then savings as well.”
Parker indicated a continuous focus on mobile, as it is the next big thing in the financial industry.
“I believe mobile telephony and banking together remain the partnership that is required to move the economy to another level,” he said.
Late last year, afb in partnership with MTN launched an innovative short-term mobile money loan product, QWIKLOAN, the first of its kind in Ghana.
Currently the mobile loans are about 10 percent of loans on the books of the financial service provider, with a collection rate of 92 percent.
The financial service has disbursed QWIKLOAN’s of over GHS 1.2 million to about 250,000 mobile money customers.
Further emphasizing on the company’s outlook for 2018, Parker noted that, savings is one area that they would be focusing on.
“Up until now the bond programme has been funding our loan book. We want to now diversify the source of our inflow and ensure that we encourage a lot more people to save,” he said.
“The more people, who can save, the more funds become available for others who need it to also be able to expand their business,” he added.
On the issue of increasing the capital requirement of banks, Parker noted that, a highly capitalized industry would necessarily not mean that these institution are serving the needs of the economy.
“In fact, when we speak about capital, all that we hear is that financial institutions must be ready to finance big ticket transactions. So if every financial institution is going to look at the big ticket transactions, who now looks at the small transactions,” he asked.
By Joshua W. Amlanu
