Credit consultant, Emmanuel Akrong has retracted a story published April 1, 2018 headlined “32 banks fail to comply with financial statement publication rules”.
According to him, the story only tried to suggest practical ways of helping grow Ghana’s banking industry.
“I am a consultant and my job is not to criticize but to provide suggested solutions to a problem,” he said.
Below is the apology letter
Dear reader
I trust all is well.
First of all, I sincerely apologize to you and your bank about the way you and your bank felt about my post that only 2 banks have complied with section 90 of Act 930 as at March 29, 2018.
The intent was not to put you and your bank in any public humiliation. I am sorry about the way you and your bank felt about my post.
I must say I was surprise to see my email posted online because it was meant to be an email sent to all those on my mailing list and not for publication on any media outlet.
Write-ups that I wish to post as article are normally preceded with a statement like this” I am publishing this article and please see attached” In addition, articles meant for publication on media outlets are put in word document and sent separately to each media house . I will speak to media folks on my email list to obtain specific approval from me before publishing emails on their website.
I want to use this opportunity to suggest practical ways to help the industry to get their financial statements out on time.
I am a consultant and my job is not to criticize but to provide suggested solutions to a problem.
The post largely pointed to a problem which was this:
- 20 banks have published their condensed FS and not full FS as at March 29, 2018 and
- 12 banks ( 35%) have not published neither their condensed FS nor full FS as at March 29, 2018
This email is to close the loop of my role as a consultant. My suggested practical solutions in order of importance is as follows
- Encourage Bank of Ghana to amend subsection 2b of section 90 of Act 930 as follows
Original text
furnish the Bank of Ghana with a copy of its audited financial statements together with the auditor’s statutory and long form audit reports; and cause the financial statements together with the auditors’ reports to be published on its website if any and in at least two daily newspapers of national circulation.
Suggested revision
Furnish the Bank of Ghana with a copy of its audited financial statements together with the auditor’s statutory and long form audit reports; and cause the financial statements together with the auditors’ reports to be published on its website.
The change I am suggesting is that the least two daily newspapers of national circulation in my view is not necessary in this age of technology and also the law is suggesting you publish your entire 100 to 120 page FS to dailies. In fact more than 10 years ago, banks in Ghana use to do that under Ghana National Accounting Standards, but with the disclosures under IFRS it will require publication in more than 5 edition of the same newspaper.
- Similar to the above, encourage Bank of Ghana to amend the guide for financial reporting which provides additional format for the quarterly FS should also say website and remove references to dailies.
- Encourage Bank of Ghana review of audited financial statements to be risk based and should not cover all banks but randomly select banks based on risk to review their FS before publication
- Work with your auditors to get 90% work done by end of December. Before I left audit 7 years ago here in Canada, auditing firm revised their charge out rates for busy season to be higher than on regular period. This encouraged a lot of companies to get their audits substantially done before January for December year ends and for banks before October for October year ends
- Make your shell financial statements with no numbers to your auditors by September and please let your auditors provide you a sign off on your financial statements notes by end of November. Unless necessary, you should not entertain any edits to notes from January to March
- Request that your auditors separate their comments into 2 types 1) must have and 2) nice to have. Please tell them to send you comments on only must have.
- Include in the performance appraisal of staff timely audits as their performance goals. Here people lost their bonus if audits are not timely and we have too many audit points
- Appoint a project manager to oversee your audits. Here in my bank we do have a project manager and before an audit meets all relevant departments and share the auditors list and get their commitments on the timelines.
The project manager reports to the CFO and if necessary the CEO on any delays
- Provide progress report to your ALCO on how your audits is progressing
- Plan, plan, plan , Plan.
From: Akrong, Emmanuel, credit consultant