The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has cautioned the general public to honour their digital loan (Mobile Money) obligations since their records were intact with the Financial Bureau Unit, and that failure to so would haunt them in the future.
According Mr. Godfred Cudjoe, Head of Credit Reporting Unit at the Central Bank, BoG has noticed that some mobile telephone subscribers use their ‘momo’ accounts to apply for these loans and then throw the SIM cards away thinking it was free money, and that nobody was coming back at them.
“What we should understand is that this information is being kept by the Credit Bureaus; next time that you need a loan and you go to a bank, the bank will check a loan that you once took, ‘momo’ loan and you did not pay,” Godfred Cudjoe said, adding, “This will affect your ability of getting a loan when you highly need that funds, so I will advise the public that when you take a ‘momo’ loan, pay it back, because if you do not pay back and throw out the SIM, it will come back and haunt you one day when you need a loan from a bank or savings and loan company.”
He made these revelations at a financial literacy and responsibility event, organised by the BoG for a section of officers of the Ghana Immigration Service in the Ashanti Region. The event also sought to empower the security officers to make informed financial decisions.
The organisation of the event was also based on the numerous complaints emanating from the security agencies, regarding ponzi schemes in the country, to which some of the security personnel had fallen prey.
Based on this, the Central Bank, in the last two years, had been organising sensitisation programmes to help the officers understand and appreciate basic financial principles. The thirty officers who attended the programme were taken through a number of financial literacy and responsibilities topics such as Knowing their Rights and Responsibilities as Financial Consumer, Customer Complaints Resolution procedures, among others.
Addressing the participants, Godfred Cudjoe told the immigration officers to be concerned about annualised Percentage Rate (APR), emphasising that anytime they were going to take a loan from a bank, they needed to ask for the annualised, which was the cost of the loan.
According to him, it is very critical for officers to look out for licensed financial institution, urging them to do a background checks about financial institutions before they deal with them.
Cudjoe further told the participants: “You should see their license in display, if you have any doubt, you can reach out to Bank of Ghana’s website and you would be able to see whether the institution is licensed.”
Touching on loan acquisition from banks, he mentioned that customers have to access their needs and really know the various charges /interest rate on the loan. In an interaction with the media, the Ashanti Regional Immigration Accountant, C/Supt Joshua Mensah Ayettey, hailed the BoG for the programme. According to Ayettey, knowledge is power and they are going to share what they have learnt with their peers.
