Mr. Emmanuel Tsivape, an astute and award-winning banker has hinted that, the financial sector clean-up is partly responsible for the dissipation of mobile bankers in the financial sector.

Speaking in an interview with Vaultz News, the renowned banker intimated that, most of the financial institutions that collapsed during the financial sector clean-up in 2018 relied extensively on mobile bankers in mobilizing deposits for both short-term and long-term investment. Hence, their collapse or consolidation brought an end to the services of most of these mobile bankers.

“Due to the competition in the industry, most financial institutions – savings and loans, microfinance, and banks were driving their business with mobile bankers. So after the closure of these financial institutions, all the mobile bankers lost their jobs. Though some of the institutions were consolidated, majority of the mobile bankers were laid off. So basically, that’s one thing that accounts for the fading away of mobile bankers in the system.”

In pursuit of reaching the vast majority of people who are unbanked in the informal sector, and the drive to maintain huge market share, most financial institutions were relying on the services of mobile bankers. Aside this phenomenon providing an opportunity for capturing the informal sector into the banking population, it also provided an employment opportunity for a lot of people, while simultaneously making bank products directly accessible for customers with wide-ranging interests. Mobile bankers were rife in the financial sector some few years ago, but suddenly, their presence is virtually fading away from the system.

bog — Financial Sector Clean-up by the Bank of Ghana

Mr. Tsivape also alluded to the fact that, existing banks in their bid to fund and drive innovation to meet rising expectations and needs of their customers, are arguably realigning the cost components of mobile bankers in their books. As a result, banks are innovating and finding newer ways to achieve the same purpose.

“Presently, because of the huge cost associated with employing numerous mobile bankers, existing banks are trying to move away from having the cost of mobile bankers in their books. Secondly, banks have cleverly resorted to the use of agency banking which provides the same opportunity for them to reach numerous clients in both the formal and the informal sectors. In agency banking, the banks grant permission to people in other businesses like mobile money, pharmacy, fuel filling stations, supermarkets, etc., to use the bank’s brand to provide banking services to customers at a particular threshold.”

The experienced banker also referred to other factors such as the use of technology, digital banking, mobile money integration, and presently COVID-19 pandemic which has rendered the services of mobile bankers less strategic.

“Now, there are other means banks have adopted to reach more customers. So aside the use of agency banking, technology, digital banking, and the use of mobile money has abated the need for mobile bankers. Customers now can do most of their bank transactions via the bank’s website or the use of a bank app. Others also rely on mobile money for their bank transactions. All these have reduced the need to use mobile bankers. And currently, COVID-19, which makes it unsafe to extensively use mobile bankers.”