The Bank of Ghana published its 2025 Fraud Report this week, and the headline that has moved most widely reads that 75 bank staff were dismissed as fraud cases surged 48 per cent. Both facts are in the report.
But the substantive story the report tells is different from the story the headline suggests, and the difference matters, not because the report is being read wrongly, but because the substantive numbers beneath the headline surface a more consequential question than the headline captures.
The 48 per cent surge in fraud cases is real. Some even think it is under-reported. Total reported cases across banks, specialised deposit-taking institutions, and payment service providers rose from 16,733 in 2024 to 24,778 in 2025.
But total value at risk rose only marginally over the same period, from GH¢99 million to GH¢101 million. The volume of incidents surged; the value per incident fell. This is not a picture of accelerating institutional decay. It is a picture of specific concentration in one part of the financial ecosystem.
The concentration is in the payment service provider sector (PSP). PSP fraud cases nearly doubled at 98 per cent year-on-year. PSP value at risk rose 42 per cent to GH¢37 million. The Bank of Ghana itself attributes this to rapid transaction volume growth and relatively lower digital literacy among users.
This is substantively a mobile money and digital payments problem, a consequence of Ghana’s substantial financial inclusion success and the substantive user base now transacting through channels that did not exist at scale a decade ago.
The traditional banking sector tells a different story. Banks and SDIs recorded reductions in both fraud incidents and value at risk. Bank value at risk fell 24 per cent from GH¢75 million to GH¢57 million. The number of staff involved in fraudulent activities fell 40 per cent, from 365 in 2024 to 219 in 2025. Dismissals fell 52 per cent, from 155 to the 75 that carried the headline. On the metrics the report tracks, Ghana’s traditional banking sector is substantively improving.
This is the point at which the substantive analytical question begins.
The Question the Improvement Raises
A senior banking sector chairman reading this report is not going to conclude that the sector’s substantive integrity problem is behind it. The reduction from 365 staff involved in fraud to 219 is welcome, but 219 is not a small number. Of those 219, some 139 were involved in cash theft and cash suppression that were caught, direct integrity failures in roles with material institutional access.
Approximately GH¢3.7 million was recovered from a total value at risk of GH¢68.2 million. The recovery rate is five per cent. Fraud that surfaces, in the sector’s current architecture, is largely fraud that is not recovered.
The substantive question the report raises is not why the improvement occurred. Improved supervisory frameworks, enhanced monitoring systems, and the specific initiatives the Bank of Ghana has driven all contribute. The substantive question is how the improvement is sustained and whether the current architecture is capable of driving the 219 number lower still.
Every one of those 219 staff members was hired at some point by their institution. Every one of the 75 dismissed staff members passed the standard pre-employment checks (Police criminal checks report, ID checks, reference checks, educational checks) their institution applied at the point of hiring. Every one of the 139 staff members involved in cash theft and cash suppression sat in a role with material institutional access that their institution substantively trusted them with.
The integrity failure that produced the dismissal did not exist at the moment of appointment or if it did, the pre-employment architecture did not surface it. The person who committed the fraud is the person the institution hired, extended authority to, and continued to trust across the tenure of their appointment.
This is the substantive analytical question the current architecture does not fully answer. Not why the fraud occurred once the staff member was in position, that is a monitoring and controls question, and the sector is substantively improving on it. The prior question: what would have surfaced about the substantive person before the appointment was made, and what would substantive re-assessment across the years have surfaced as circumstances substantively changed?
What the Standard Checks Actually Miss
Pre-employment checks as practised across most of the sector are substantively administrative rather than analytical. The candidate produces a CV. The institution takes references from the names the candidate has nominated. A Police Clearance Certificate confirms the candidate has no formal criminal record with the Ghana Police Service. Academic certificates are verified with the awarding institution where the institution is diligent about doing so. Employment history is confirmed by contacting previous employers, again where diligence extends that far.
Each of these checks verifies something specific and narrow. The Police Clearance verifies that the candidate has no formal criminal record not that the candidate has no substantive prior conduct that would matter to the appointing institution, only that no such conduct entered the formal police record.
The CV verifies that the candidate has claimed a specific history not that the history is substantively accurate. The nominated references verify that the candidate’s chosen contacts will speak favourably not that others in the candidate’s professional network would speak similarly. The certificates verify what was awarded not the substantive current capability the credential is supposed to represent.
There is a specific pattern this matters for. A staff member who is dismissed from one institution for cash suppression may not be charged criminally, the institution may prefer to settle the matter through resignation. The next employer sees no Police Clearance issue, no formal disciplinary record, and a CV that describes the previous role in accurate but selective terms.
The reference from the previous employer is diplomatic because the matter was handled privately. The staff member joins the new institution, moves into a role with similar access, and the substantive pattern that produced the first dismissal has substantive opportunity to repeat itself. Not because any check was skipped, because the standard checks do not substantively reach the conduct that was never formally recorded.
The pattern is not speculation. It is the substantive reality of what happens when integrity failures at one institution move through the sector to another without institutional visibility. And it is the specific category of exposure that substantive analytical assessment addresses.
What Serious Institutions Do Differently
Institutions that treat sensitive appointments as substantive analytical exercises rather than administrative processes ask four questions that the standard checks do not fully answer. Who is this person actually, beyond the CV and the Police Clearance, verified across multiple institutional records, and across the conduct that never entered the formal record?
How do they think, decide, and behave under sustained pressure and changing circumstances; assessed through structured behavioural interviewing, psychometric instruments, and clinical interview where the role substantively warrants it? What have they actually done in prior positions, as the institutions that engaged with them describe it rather than as their chosen referees do? What can they substantively deliver in the specific role, assessed against the substantive competencies the appointment requires?
None of this eliminates the uncertainty inherent in hiring decisions. Institutions make those decisions under genuine uncertainty by their nature. But substantive analytical work substantively narrows the uncertainty. It surfaces the dimensions of the candidate the standard checks systematically miss.
And it applies with sustained discipline across the years because trust extended at hiring is not the same as trust verified across the tenure of an appointment, and periodic re-assessment for staff in materially sensitive roles is what mature institutional practice recognises as substantively necessary.
The Bank of Ghana’s report concludes with the observation that addressing fraud demands, in its words, constant vigilance and strengthened controls. This is substantively correct. The question the sector’s improvement raises is what constant vigilance actually looks like in practice at the level of specific institutional discipline.
Vigilance at the point of hiring means substantive analytical assessment of the person, not administrative verification of the documents. Vigilance across the tenure of sensitive appointments means periodic substantive re-assessment, not the assumption that trust extended once remains substantively unchanged. Vigilance in commercial partnerships and counterparty relationships means substantive analytical work on the counterparty, not the acceptance of what the counterparty presents about itself.
Vigilance in the culture of an institution means the operational discipline of asking who its people substantively are, how they substantively think, what they have substantively done, and what they can substantively deliver before the appointment, and across the years that follow.
The 75 dismissals in the report are not the substantive story. The 219 staff involved in fraud is one substantive story. The five per cent recovery rate is another. Both point to the same substantive institutional question: how the improvement is sustained, and how the substantive analytical work that would sustain it becomes standard practice rather than exceptional discipline.
The Bank of Ghana’s supervisory work is substantively serious and substantively producing results. What remains for each institution is the specific institutional discipline of matching the analytical work to the substantive weight of what its consequential appointments actually depend on. The checks are useful. They are not sufficient. The substantive questions remain, and they warrant substantive answers.
The author, Nana Attobrah Quaicoe, served as Director General of Ghana’s Bureau of National Intelligence (2022–2025) and writes on national security, intelligence, integrity assessment, and institutional governance in the Ghanaian context.
