Veteran Economist and Investment expert Mr. Kwame Pianim has commended Fidelity Bank Ghana, the nation’s largest privately-owned Ghanaian bank, as an example of the sound governance, credible succession, and homegrown ownership that Ghana’s economy needs if it is to sustain its recovery and build a deeper, more resilient capital market.
Mr. Pianim made the remarks during a panel discussion on the macro-environment at Fidelity Bank’s Debt Capital Markets Conference, held in Accra under the theme “Lower Rates, Higher Opportunity: Unlocking Growth Through the Debt Capital Markets.” He opened by commending the bank for convening a conversation he described as both timely and necessary. “Let me thank Fidelity Bank for convening this,” Mr. Pianim said. “It gives me confidence. When I look at the numbers, I say, wow.”
Reflecting on more than five decades of witnessing Ghana’s economic cycles, Mr. Pianim was characteristically candid about the work required to protect the country’s hard-won stability, warning against complacency, urging fiscal discipline through the transition to growth, and calling for stronger institutions and guardrails to keep the country on course. But it was when he turned to the qualities that make an institution credible and enduring that he pointed directly to Fidelity Bank.
Asked what advice he would offer any issuer considering the capital market, Mr. Pianim placed integrity and continuity at the centre of his answer. “Be honest. Have the right numbers,” he said.
“Honesty, good management, and making sure that whatever you are doing, you are going to have a good succession plan like Fidelity Bank has done, the transition from the founders of the bank to a new generation. Then you’ll be able to pay.”
For Mr. Pianim, Fidelity’s orderly leadership transition was proof of the kind of institutional maturity that gives investors confidence and allows a business to honour its obligations over the long term.
He returned to the bank again when addressing how Ghana can build a financial system that answers to its own priorities. Arguing that the country must strengthen the domestic sources of capital that fund its growth its pension funds, its insurance pools, its own institutions Mr. Pianim stressed the importance of Ghanaian ownership in the financial sector.
“If we strengthen the structures, the sources, and make sure that all these financial institutions are significantly owned, like Fidelity Bank, by Ghanaians, then we are on the right path,” he said. “And then we will be dancing to our inner tune, not to others’ tune.”
His remarks speaks to a distinction Fidelity Bank has long carried as Ghana’s largest privately-owned Ghanaian bank, an institution built, owned, and governed by Ghanaians, and increasingly positioned as a convenor of the national conversations that will shape the country’s economic future.
In hosting the Debt Capital Markets Conference, the bank brought together the Bank of Ghana, the Ministry of Finance, the Ghana Stock Exchange, institutional investors, and market leaders around a shared task: converting Ghana’s recovery into lasting, productive growth.
