The Head of Global Market at Stanbic Bank Ghana, Mrs Afua Bulley, has expressed the bank’s willingness to support its regulator, the central bank, to have the right legal and regulatory framework to keep the industry moving.
She explained that to ensure that the banking industry had a deeper, broader, more efficient, transparent and liquid market that would help achieve their economic goals, it was necessary for them as industry players to support their regulator to strengthen the industry.
“We look at the market and the role we play as market leaders, it is very critical to get market depth and market depth comes from having the right legislature and the regulatory framework based on which the market develops, So we think it is very important for us to support our regulators the central bank and GFIM to get the industry going”, she added.
Speaking at a workshop organised by the Ghana Fixed Income Market (GFIM) and EnsAfrica on November 29 in Accra, Mrs Bulley said that as market leaders, Stanbic and the Standard Bank group were honoured to partner with GFIM and ENsAfrica to run this workshop on “Netting of Repos and Derivatives under Ghanaian Law”, especially currently when the banking sector was undergoing scrutiny.
She added that the financial markets, especially for emerging economies like Ghana’s, provided important platforms for matching the supply and demand of funds.
For this function to be properly carried out, markets require depth, liquidity, transparency and efficiency with the appropriate laws and regulations underpinning them.
“In organising this workshop, we believe that we are lending support to our regulator as it focuses on the right governance structures that will improve the market,” she said.
Client Focus
She stated emphatically that the bank was very much concerned about the product and services it offered to clients.
“With our customer centric focus it is important that our clients are provided with the relevant financial market solutions and have access to deep and liquid markets that operate within a robust legal and regulatory framework”, she said.
She added that the fact that the bank was an international bank and a local player at the same time, it was necessary that they added value to their product and services in other to get them in tune with what was happening internationally, and once the framework was in place we would able to compete internationally since we are shifting to international standards, we need to be at the same level as well.
“To ensure that Ghana becomes and remains an important global player on global financial markets, our markets must also conform to international standards. Other African markets including Nigeria are in the process of getting their laws amended to improve their adherence to international norms and we need to ensure that we are not left behind in our bid to attract and retain capital”, Mrs Bulley said.
The need for Netting
The Head, IRD and Bonds, Global Markets, Legal, CID at Stanbic Bank, South Africa, Mr Monwabisi Zukani, for his part called for a legislation to include netting in the country.
He explained that without netting a lot of institutions would have to keep more capital on their side and what it meant was that the institutions would account for their finance on a gross basis as opposed to Net which meant more of its capital would be taken out.
“Netting for the country is very important to make sure there is an open of liquidity and there are more markets players especially international market players that come and take part in trading”, he said.
He added that when netting is included in the financial sector in the country, Ghana would be moving in the right direction and also attract more international investors to develop the country.
By Daily Graphic
