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Fidelity Bank Ghana Ltd., Ghana’s leading private indigenous bank, has started a series of financial literacy seminars targeted at tertiary students across the country.

One of the bank’s key initiatives to support financial literacy and education in Ghana, the goal of these seminars is to provide university students with information on the new face of banking and advice on responsible financial behaviour.

The first of the series was held at the University of Professional Studies Accra (UPSA) in collaboration with the Association of Business Administration Students (ABAS) as part of their ABAS week celebrations.

The over 300 students who attended were afforded the opportunity to listen to and interact with senior Fidelity Bank officials including the Director for Inclusive Banking and CSR, Dr. William Derban.  Other experts from Fidelity were Mr. Prince Osei-Hyeaman, Channel & Products Lead for Mobile & POS Banking; Mr. Eric Sena Morttey, Manager, Operations Support, Inclusive Banking and Mr. Samuel Danquah, Area Sales Manager, Smart Account Sales.

Topics covered centred around the role of technology and financial inclusion in 21st century banking. Students were presented with statistics on the state of access to and use of financial services in Ghana.

Amongst others, they were led to explore local and global trends such as agency banking, mobile money, mobile banking, and reduced know your customer (KYC) requirements that are allowing financial services to reach more people and dynamically transforming how we as individuals and social units conduct financial transactions.

Dr. Derban explained that these seminars were a key part of Fidelity’s cross-cutting financial literacy campaigns, which in turn are an integral part of the bank’s financial inclusion and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) agendas. “Over the last few years, Africa has witnessed massive growth, with a resultant change in customer demands. Banking since institutionalization has focused solely on the branch-customer relationship; however, as urban centres sprawl and rural areas become more finance and tech savvy, demand is birthing innovation.  More branches are expensive, so today we have internet, mobile and agency banking as the interface between the client, the branch and the bank”, Dr. Derban emphasized.

During refreshments, following the seminar, students interacted with Fidelity Smart Friends and explored the Fidelity Smart Account and Agency Banking Network, two of such global game-changers, both of which won awards for Product Innovation at the recent Ghana Banking Awards.

Mr. Maxwell Effah, thanking Fidelity on behalf of the students, commended the bank for the initiative and echoed the sentiments of many students who had found the forum very informative and engaging. He urged the bank to replicate the model across other tertiary institutions, as it afforded students, particularly those in Business Schools, the opportunity to learn about trends in banking not covered in regular curricula.