Best bank: Ecobank
In 2025, Ecobank implemented group-led platform upgrades locally, with a focus on scaling payment ecosystem volumes and digitising high-friction trade and treasury journeys.
SMEs are a key area of focus. In 2025, the bank expanded SME enablement through platforms, partnerships and structured access to finance, rather than relying only on conventional balance sheet lending.
For example, Ecobank arranged a €10 million trade finance facility with Proparco, supporting SME trade clients through receivables finance, contract/local purchase order finance and asset finance. This facility was complemented by partial credit guarantees designed to reduce lender exposure and encourage use. Ecobank also provides advisory support, partner programmes and entrepreneur development.
The bank’s Ellevate programme has extended credit to more than 12,748 business owners, disbursing $354 million in loans, attracting $329 million in deposits, and supporting more than 2,500 entrepreneurs since 2020.
In cross-border payments, Ecobank’s payment solutions aim to reduce the operational bottlenecks that matter to businesses. In 2025, the bank integrated real-time cross-border payment services into its digital banking platform Omni Plus, improving payment speed and tracking for business customers and directly reducing friction in this area. It also launched a pan-African payments reporting dashboard, which provides real-time analytics for corporate clients and better visibility for multi-account and multi-entity customers. The dashboard effectively strengthens treasury control and liquidity oversight for corporate clients.
In trade finance in 2025, Ecobank digitised selected trade finance workflows, helping to move clients away from slower branch-led and manual processes. These enhancements improve transaction execution and information quality and control for firms operating across multiple entities or markets. The result is an integrated business banking proposition in which trade, payments and reporting increasingly sit on the same digital infrastructure.
Best investment bank: Stanbic Bank Ghana
Stanbic Bank has the strongest investment banking franchise in Ghana, with a strategic focus on catalysing Ghana’s structural transformation and positioning local businesses for regional leadership.
Key to this strategy is the bank’s cultivation of long-term client relationships. Eleven of Stanbic’s 17 mandates in 2025 were repeat mandates. For example, the $117 million funding package Stanbic provided to Engineers & Planners (E&P) was the third successive funding for E&P since 2021, confirming Stanbic’s role as the firm’s primary banking partner.
Similarly, the bank’s relationship with Ghana Airports Company (GACL) dates back to 2006: in 2025 Stanbic participated in a $250 million syndicated term loan facility to GACL, with a $79 million contribution.
Stanbic has also backed Genser Energy Ghana Limited since 2015, when the firm was in its startup phase. This longstanding relationship was crucial in the bank being invited to increase its exposure to Genser and assume a lead role in underwriting the firm’s $425 million syndicated term loan facility in 2025.
Stanbic has shown that it is highly effective in navigating macroeconomic uncertainty and regulatory challenges. In 2025, the bank acted as financial adviser and broker to Castel Group on its acquisition of Diageo’s 80.4% stake in Guinness Ghana Breweries. As well as providing strategic advice and execution, Stanbic resolved the regulatory issues that could have materially altered the economics and feasibility of the transaction.
The bank led engagement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to secure a formal waiver of the mandatory takeover offer requirement, thereby avoiding an additional obligation of roughly $30 million.
It also coordinated with the Ghana Stock Exchange, the SEC and minority shareholders to maintain regulatory alignment and execution certainty, including securing a temporary exemption from the GSE’s free float threshold so that Guinness Ghana Breweries could remain listed after completion.
Best retail bank: Absa Bank
Absa Bank Ghana has built its retail franchise around a clear objective: becoming one of the country’s fastest growing retail banks through segment-led propositions, digital distribution and simplified customer journeys. Rather than pursuing growth through scale alone, the bank has focused on tailoring products and experiences for its personal, prestige, premier and youth customer segments while deepening engagement with mass-market customers through digital channels and agency banking.
The strategy delivered tangible results during 2025. Its retail customer base increased 6.4% year-on-year, retail revenue rose 32% and retail loans expanded by 33%.
Digital investment sat at the centre of that growth. The bank expanded its Spark KYC-light digital account as a key acquisition engine for younger and mass-market customers, attracting almost 12,000 registrations, while digitally active customers increased by 21% over the review period. The enhanced mobile app introduced digital statement requests, insurance purchases, travel notifications and expanded bill payment capabilities, alongside digital account onboarding and the digitisation of loan applications and treasury bill processing.
Absa also invested in extending access beyond traditional branches. The launch of agency banking created a network of 955 agents that processed GHS663 million ($57.9 million) of transactions in underserved communities. Investments in point-of-sale infrastructure and MobiTap terminals strengthened merchant acceptance and digital commerce capabilities nationwide.
Customer experience improvements focused on speed and convenience. Ghana Card verification was integrated into onboarding and servicing processes, more than 20 retail forms were digitised, and a new 24-hour operations hub enabled customers to resolve issues outside branch hours.
The bank complemented these initiatives with targeted inclusion programmes. Its Ahomka digital lending platform extended GHS3.6 billion of microloans to four million customers, while financial literacy programmes reached more than 1.7 million tertiary students. Combined with youth-focused propositions, affluent banking benefits and integrated rewards ecosystems, those investments helped position Absa as a retail bank serving customers across every stage of their financial journey.
Best bank for SMEs: Access Bank Ghana
Access Bank’s SME strategy in Ghana is built around combining access to finance with advisory support, digital tools and partnerships that help small businesses formalise, scale and access new markets.
In 2025, the bank expanded a series of initiatives designed to address some of the biggest challenges facing SMEs, from affordable credit and working-capital constraints to skills development and international trade access. Access Bank reports that its SME programmes in Ghana reached more than 515,000 businesses, supported the creation of more than 6,200 jobs and provided financing support to 1,249 women-led and women-owned enterprises.
Access Bank strengthened its lending proposition through products including its instant business loan, where the maximum facility size was increased from GHS300,000 ($26,600) to GHS500,000. The solution allows SMEs to access financing without traditional landed property collateral, helping address one of the key barriers to credit. During the year, the bank disbursed 481 instant business loans worth a combined GHS99.2 million.
The bank also expanded targeted solutions including trade credit facilities, invoice discounting and distributor finance programmes, helping SMEs improve liquidity, manage supply chains and participate more effectively in domestic and international trade.
Digitalisation was another important part of the strategy. Access Bank facilitated SME adoption of digital payment and collection tools, including point-of-sale terminals, QR payments, mobile payments and AccessPay, helping businesses reduce cash dependency and improve operational efficiency.
Beyond banking products, Access Bank focused on SME capacity building. Through partnerships with private companies and multilateral organisations, the bank delivered training programmes focused on financial management, governance, digital transformation and export readiness.
Its SME Business Interactive Series, delivered in partnership with Deloitte Ghana, has reached more than 9,500 SMEs, with more than 350 businesses transitioning onto digital platforms and participating businesses reporting average growth of 37%. A separate partnership with DHL aims to support 50,000 SMEs by combining Access Bank’s trade finance capabilities with DHL’s logistics expertise, helping Ghanaian businesses access wider regional and global opportunities.
Best bank for consumer lending: Access Bank Ghana
Access Bank Ghana’s consumer lending proposition effectively digitises credit access across real use cases. The customer journeys for its Pick Now Pay Later (PNPL) and Fly Now Pay Later (FNPL) products can now be completed entirely on mobile, including eligibility checks, product selection, approval and merchant fulfilment.
These are processes that previously took up to three weeks to complete but are now possible in a matter of minutes. With lending embedded into purchase ecosystems through distribution networks of merchants and travel providers, credit is readily available for Access customers at the point of need for purchases such as flights or travel packages, which are often time sensitive.
The USSD-based Payday Loan solution extends this same logic to short-term liquidity: salary-domiciled customers can access up to 50% of their earned salary in under 60 seconds, without paperwork or branch visits, with repayment tied either to their next salary date or within 30 days. In both instances, digital lending journeys have effectively reduced friction, providing customers with instant credit with controlled repayment. Uptake in 2025 was strong: PNPL/FNPL recorded 100% growth in its first year, while Payday Loans grew by more than 200% between 2024 and 2025.
Consumer lending products at Access Bank are effectively tailored to identifiable client segments, which are defined based on income sources and customer circumstances rather than a generic retail credit model. Both PNPL/FNPL and the Payday Loan are designed around verified income and an established banking relationship, with repayment structures aligned to salary cycles, which supports both accessibility and control.
The model also extends to mortgage lending. The bank’s mortgage programme includes a dedicated diaspora mortgage variant, creating a formal route for Ghanaians living abroad to access property finance in the local market.
These lending solutions effectively calibrate products to the cashflow profile and financing purpose of different customer segments, increasing relevance at the point of borrowing and underscoring the traction that these products have achieved.
Best digital bank for consumers: Affinity Africa
Since formally launching in October 2024, Affinity Africa has built a distinctive and highly innovative digital banking franchise for consumers in Ghana.
Its deposit-led, branchless operating model allows the bank to serve customer segments that traditional banks have largely failed to reach – especially informal workers, micro-entrepreneurs and first-time formal banking users. Of the bank’s roughly 120,000 customers, around 65% were previously unbanked. In 2025 alone, 41,000 new customers joined the bank, indicating rapid growth largely through word-of-mouth.
Affinity functions as a compelling alternative to traditional banks and informal savings mechanisms. Instead of conventional credit assessment tools, the bank uses transaction data and behavioural analytics to underwrite loans to clients with no formal credit history.
Affinity has disbursed more than $15 million in loans since launch, with monthly origination volumes above 1,500 loans. Loan products are transparently priced, without hidden fees, and the mobile app allows clear visualisation of repayment progress.
The bank’s user experience has been meticulously designed with underserved customers in mind. Rather than transplanting conventional digital banking journeys into a new market, Affinity has built its interface around the needs of first-time banking users and customers with low financial literacy.
Design choices include scroll-based rather than swipe-based navigation, mirroring hand-drawn feedback from the bank’s field research among target clients, hiding balances behind eye icons to protect users in public spaces, and even increasing rather than minimising clicks where this reduced anxiety and user error.
Financial education is also integrated into the user journey to help customers understand pricing, product use and financial decisions in-app.
Affinity has created a lean and efficient digital onboarding process, which includes the only fully digital KYC process in Ghana. Customers can open and verify accounts entirely in-app, removing administrative friction that often prevents low-income and informally employed customers from entering the financial system.
