Persons who are entitled to claims from any of the collapsed microfinance companies are expected to be paid at least from the next month.
The payments will, however, follow the completion of validation for such claims by the Receiver, Eric Nana Nipah of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
The Central Bank appointed Eric Nana Nipah, a Director of PricewaterhouseCoopers (Ghana) Limited (“PwC”) as receiver for all the 347 microfinance companies whose licenses were revoked last Friday following what it said was to protect the stability of the financial system and to protect affected depositors.
[contextly_sidebar id=”lGmIsnMXddkjhI0KaVlhEbPnlQsvwfW0″] In a statement by the BoG, it said the receiver is to among others recover the benefits of creditors as well as satisfy the indebtedness of the affected institutions.
“Whilst the situation assessment is on-going, all creditors including depositors will be requested to submit their completed Proof of Debt (PoD) forms with supporting documentation to the Receiver for validation and agreeing as set out above. The receiver also estimates that the process of validating and agreeing to creditor claims will take another 30 days from the date of the deadline for the submission of Creditor claims”, the statement indicated.
The main duties of the Receiver are “to recover and maximise asset realisations for the benefit of creditors including depositors and distribute realisations in accordance with the relevant provisions of Act 930, to satisfy the indebtedness of these institutions to their body of creditors, to the extent possible.”
“Following his appointment, the receiver has commenced the process of taking control over these affected microfinance companies, as part of the orderly winding up of the operations of these institutions. He estimates that this assessment will be completed within the next 10 days”, portions of the statement added.
During this period of validation and agreeing claims, depositor claims which have been validated and accepted in the receivership will be paid concurrently at designated Consolidated Bank of Ghana Ltd (CBG) branches, to the extent possible.
The revocation of licenses
Apart from the affected microfinance companies, 39 microcredit institutions also had their licenses revoked by the central bank.
Of the microfinance institutions affected, 192 of them were insolvent while the remaining 155 had ceased operations.
Following the revocation of the licences of these institutions, a total number of 137 microfinance companies remain active.
The BoG took these actions in line with section 123 (1) of the Banks and Specialised Deposit-Taking Institutions Act, 2016 (Act 930).
This mandates the central bank to revoke the licence of a bank or Specialised Deposit-taking Institution (SDI) “where the Bank of Ghana determines that the institution is insolvent or is likely to become insolvent within the next 60 days.”
