Fidelity Bank Ghana has entered into a partnership with the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service (GPS) to provide forensic training for some staff members of the bank.

According to the agreement, 50 bank staff of Fidelity Bank will take part in the training and they will in turn train other frontline and control function staff.

Meanwhile, the new partnership makes Fidelity Bank the first bank in Ghana to provide its staff with such forensic training. The forensic training which will be conducted by the CID of the Ghana Police includes critical areas like signature comparison and analysis, fingerprint examination and analysis as well as security paper forgery detection.

Ransford Nana Addo Jnr., Head of Financial Crime Management at Fidelity Bank Ghana, speaking on the motive behind this training revealed that the training is geared towards fighting crime.

“This initiative is geared towards increasing our resilience to fight crime and also to improve our control environment. As a bank that prioritizes customer safety in delivering our services, we believe this is a good step as it will complement the robust controls that we already have in place.”
Ransford Nana Addo Jnr.

In his remarks at the opening ceremony for the 3-day training, the Director-General of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Ghana Police Service, COP Isaac Ken Yeboah, commended Fidelity Bank Ghana for taking the initiative to go above and beyond the average security measures in their delivery of financial services.

“I am very impressed with the initiative taken by Fidelity Bank Ghana. We encourage all financial institutions to take a cue from what Fidelity Bank is providing to its staff so that collectively we fight crime more effectively.”
Isaac Ken Yeboah

Protecting the Interest of Customers

Fidelity Bank’s collaboration with the Ghana Police Service to undertake this forensic training for its staff is a demonstration of the bank’s commitment to protecting the interests of its customers and other stakeholders.

This partnership is described by some participants as a step in the right direction, especially at a time when cyber-crimes in the financial ecosystem is on the ascendency. A banking Industry Fraud Report by the Bank of Ghana indicated that cyber/e-mail fraud accounted for 1.05% of the total number of fraud cases recorded in 2020.

Moreover, the growing online banking services are a particular area of concern for the Bank of Ghana (BoG), the Ministry of Communications, and the Ghana Association of Bankers as they worked together to develop the BoG’s Cyber Security Directive for Financial Institutions, which launched in October 2018. This directive established guidelines for cybersecurity and information security in the financial sector, to secure the financial intermediation process and to strengthen bank and customer confidence in the security of banking technology.

Under the guideline, Banks were obliged to implement cybersecurity controls and follow a timeline to ensure that they are meeting requirements. All banks were required to appoint a cyber and information security officer to advise senior management and shape policies regarding cybersecurity issues.

However, since then, all banks failed to go according to the guideline until the latest Fidelity move by Fidelity Bank.