Fidelity Bank has assured stakeholders and customers that the bank is addressing the reporting concerns raised by the Bank of Ghana.
In the interim, Fidelity said, it has reached agreements with its partner banks to aid in the seamless completion of foreign exchange transactions on behalf of Fidelity Bank.
“We refer to Bank of Ghana’s notice to the public, of a suspension of our Foreign Exchange trading licence, and wish to reiterate that this does not in any way affect Fidelity Bank’s normal banking operations.
“While we address the reporting concerns raised by our regulator, we have in the interim reached agreements with our partner banks to aid in seamless completion of foreign exchange transactions on behalf of Fidelity Bank.
“We apologize for any inconvenience this announcement may have caused, and we reassure all our valued customers that we are actively engaging the Bank of Ghana to resolve the issue as soon as possible. All Branches, Agent Points and digital platforms continue to provide our customers with the full range of financial services as usual.
“As a Bank, we strive to maintain the highest levels of operational compliance across all our business activities, and we are fully committed to engaging the Bank of Ghana to resolve this situation.”
This was after the Regulator fined them as well as First National Bank Limited a combined 1000 penalty points each for breaching sections 3.4, 3.5, and 3.9 of the Ghana Interbank Forex Market Conduct rules.
In addition, the Bank of Ghana suspended the respective forex licenses of the two banks from 29th June 2023 to 28th July 2023.
The central bank in a statement cautioned forex market players to adhere strictly to the applicable forex market regulations and guidelines.
“By this notice, we caution forex market players including banks, forex bureaus, forex brokers, and money transfer operators (MTOs) to adhere strictly to the applicable forex market regulations and guidelines,” the statement said.
Find below what sections 3.4, 3.5, and 3.9 of the Ghana Interbank Forex Market Conduct rules say…
Section 3.4 “Licensed Foreign Exchange Dealer (LFXD) banks are required to update indicative quotes for buying and selling US dollars at regular intervals on the Reuters and Bloomberg information systems. These quotes should be updated no less frequently than every 30 minutes. Indicative quotes serve as the minimum traded lots for market-makers.
Section 3.5 said “All interbank FX trades must be booked on the Reuters platform and appropriately confirmed within five (5) minutes after the trade is concluded. These trades must also be reported in the daily FX report submitted to the Bank of Ghana.”
Section 3.9 says “The Bank of Ghana shall publish the Ghana Cedi reference rate with respect to the US dollar on the Bank of Ghana website by 16:30 hours GMT daily except on holidays. The reference rate shall be computed using the weighted average exchange rate of all eligible US dollar transactions that are reported to the Bank of Ghana by the cut-off time of 15:30 hours GMT. The Bid and Offer reference rates are calculated by taking a +/- 0.05% bid/ask spread around the weighted average exchange rate.”
Source: 3News