GTBank lends support to Korle Bu Accident Centre

The Guaranty Trust Bank (Ghana) Limited has completed renovation of parts of the Amenity Ward of the Emergency Accidents Centre at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital.

The project includes the installation of two patient cardiac monitors, three automatic hand dryers and a water heater; re-painted the corridors of the ward and fixing of other broken facilities; and donation of assorted medical equipment and items worth over Gh₵20,000.

This forms part of the bank’s 2013 Corporate Social Responsibility activities and to fulfill its promise to improve healthcare delivery.

The bank, last year, announced its intention to adopt the Ward for the next five years to ensure proper maintenance and also provide other needed medical equipment for the smooth running of the Centre.

“As a responsible corporate entity, it has been our policy to give back to the society in which we operate and the selection of the Accident Centre at Korle Bu is especially so because it is meant to serve a lot of people across the length and breadth of Ghana, bearing in mind the sustainability of our project”, stated Lekan Sanusi, Managing Director of GTBank Ghana.

The Head of the Accident Centre, Dr. A. O. Addo, expressed gratitude to the Bank for honouring its promise to the Hospital. He said the items were essential and would go a long way to help in the delivery of good healthcare to patients.

Guaranty Trust Bank actively supports numerous programmes across Ghana that positively affects general healthcare, education, the arts, sports, community development and the environment.

Matters arising in Ghana’s banking industry

As part of measures to encourage the use of non-cash modes of transaction settlement, the Bank of Ghana, in consultation with the banking industry, has set a limit on the cashing of third party cheques over-the-counter at banks.

A third party payee is anyone other than the account holder.

Effective 2^nd July 2013, cash payments in honour of cheques to third parties at bank counters shall not exceed ten thousand Ghana Cedis (GH¢10,000).

The limit does not apply to third party cheques that are presented for the credit of an account through clearing. It does not also apply where the payee is the drawer of the cheque.

However, customers of banks are encouraged to use the various payment instruments and products such as cards and mobile money available for transaction settlement in the banks and at point of sale terminals.

Banks and other financial intermediaries are encouraged to enhance and expand their facilities to assist in the enforcement of the said limit.

The Bank of Ghana expects that the implementation of the limit will also reduce the incidence of fraud and other malfeasance as well as reduce the scope for abuse of the banking system by criminals.

The threshold for encashment of cheques over the counter by third parties would be reduced further in January 2014.

In related development, Guaranty Trust Bank (Ghana) Limited has introduced three additional e-banking products as part of its bouquet of electronic banking solutions aimed at both corporate and individual clients.

They include the GTPay, an integrated and secure online platform to enable corporate clients such as hotels, airlines, churches, educational institutions and supermarkets to accept payments on their websites; the Trade Tracker, a customer-driven product that allows individual and corporate clients to follow and monitor the processing of their trade transactions with the Bank; and the Return Cheque Notification system, an interactive platform that forwards notifications to customers in the form of an email and SMS  immediately an inward cheque is returned from a third party bank.

Managing Director of GTBank Ghana, Lekan Sanusi, explained that at the core of the Bank’s values is the provision of convenient business solutions to all customers, and as such, new and exciting alternatives are constantly being offered to make the lives of customers easy.

“These additions to the bouquet of its electronic banking products and services come as testament to GTBank’s quest and success in offering convenient alternatives and the utmost satisfaction for customers when it comes to e-banking reliability” he stated.

Meanwhile, GTBank has completed its GH-Link ATM interoperability project led by GhIPPS to enable all its electronic terminals nationwide to accept other banks’ ATM cards. This is a way of facilitating business transactions and deepening the process of creating cashless society in the country.

The Bank presently operates from 24 branches spread across six regions in the country with advanced plans of covering the entire nation.