23 findings, each with its working
None of this was hidden. All of it came from documents Ghanaian institutions published themselves — and none of it was visible until somebody put the documents side by side.
Use any of it. Quote it, republish it, put it in an article or a deck. No permission needed, no credit required, no need to tell us. Every line links to the working so you can check it before you repeat it — which you should.
From Bank of Ghana's Annual Percentage Rate returns, which every bank must file and almost nobody reads.
The same one-year SME loan costs 11.03% at one Ghanaian bank and 33.58% at another
About GH₵22,550 a year of difference on GH₵100,000 — for the same money, over the same term, from banks the same regulator licenses.
Bank of Ghana APR returns, May 2026, all 22 banks
One bank advertises 13.70% and reports charging 23.42% once fees are counted
The widest gap of the 22. The fee categories the Bank publishes account for 4.21 of those 9.72 points; the rest is not explained by any public source.
Bank of Ghana APR returns, May 2026
More than half of one bank's fee gap is not explained by any public source
The Bank publishes fee categories alongside the APR. For the bank with the widest gap those come to 4.21 percentage points against a gap of 9.72 — so a borrower cannot find out what the remaining 5.51 points are for, and neither can we.
Bank of Ghana APR returns, May 2026
Bank fees are falling three times faster for large borrowers than for small ones
Corporate fee load down 49%, small business down 16%. The gap between the largest and smallest borrowers widened while the picture improved for both.
Four Bank of Ghana returns spanning twenty months — three of which the Bank no longer publishes
The banks that publish lending criteria require six months of their own account history first
Shopping around at the point of need does not work — by the time a business needs money it cannot manufacture six months of turnover through a bank it has never used.
Published criteria from the banks that state any
Only one bank in Ghana publishes both a mortgage rate and its fees
Twenty-one Ghanaian bank websites were scanned for a published mortgage rate, and in September 2026 their published documents were read too, where the sites allowed it. One bank publishes both a rate and its fees: Republic, whose four rates — 18% a year for individuals, 23% for businesses, 13.5% under the government scheme and 11.5% in dollars — sit on its mortgage calculator rather than the page describing the mortgage, and whose fees are in a tariff guide dated March 2026. First National Bank, who acquired Ghana Home Loans and are described in the business press as the country's mortgage leaders, publish a full home-loan fee schedule dated March 2026 and no rate — not in the schedule, their brochure or their application form; their penalty for falling behind is 6% a year above a rate they do not publish. Bank of Ghana also licenses a category called Mortgage Finance; its one member, NorthStar Home Finance, publishes four service lines and no price — no rate, no minimum, no loan-to-value, no term. Absa publishes terms and no rate; Stanbic seven products, four currencies and no rate; Fidelity no rate; GCB no mortgage product.
Twenty-one banks' websites and published documents, and the Bank of Ghana Mortgage Finance register, September 2026
Three lenders publish a price for a public servant's payroll loan: 42%, 40% and 36.5%
Corrected 24 September 2026, when this compared Adehyeman with a small-business loan average, and 26 September 2026, when our document scan found a third lender's price. Adehyeman charges 42% plus 2% processing and 1% monitoring. Sinapi Aba's tariff guide gives 40% on salary loans to public servants, over up to 48 months, and lists no processing or facility fee; it calls its rates indicative. First Atlantic Bank charges 36.5% with the heaviest fees — 2.5% upfront, 3% of every monthly repayment and 1% management. The cheapest on interest is the dearest on fees, and none publishes enough to compare the total cost.
Adehyeman Savings and Loans' website; Sinapi Aba Savings and Loans' tariff guide dated 1 June 2026; First Atlantic Bank's tariff guide dated 24 August 2026
Established by going to every licensed firm on the regulators' registers and recording what each states. The absences are dated, because an absence only counts if somebody looked.
The exchange's rules set stockbroker commission at 0.80% to 1.80%, plus 0.70% in levies; IC Securities, the largest broker, shows its schedule to account holders
Corrected 26 September 2026: this finding said nothing is published. The exchange publishes the range. IC Securities, which handles over half of value traded, shows account holders a schedule falling from 1.80% on trades up to GH¢500 to 1.05% above GH¢10,000 (seen 27 September 2026); on the other brokers' sites we could read, no rate is published. Buying and later selling costs 3% to 5% of the amount before the price moves.
Every dealing member's website and documents, checked August and September 2026; Rule 66 of the GSE Trading Rules
Every Ghanaian fund must set out its fees before you invest; three of the 20 managers we checked also put a charge online
Under L.I. 1695 a fund's scheme particulars must state how the manager is paid, be updated every year and be given to you free before any sale; entry charges may not exceed 7% and exit charges 5%, never both. FAAM, IC and Stanbic Investment Management publish a charge online, from 1.75% to 2.25% a year. Charges compound every year, so for any other fund ask for the scheme particulars before you invest.
Unit Trusts and Mutual Funds Regulations, 2001 (L.I. 1695), cited by the SEC in 2026; fund managers' own material, checked September 2026
24 of Ghana's 26 licensed savings and loans companies publish no lending rate at all
There is no APR table for these institutions, so a borrower turned down by a bank cannot establish what the alternative costs before committing.
Bank of Ghana's register, every website visited September 2026
11 of 95 Ghanaian providers say anything about whether somebody living abroad can open an account
Ghanaians abroad sent home US$7.8bn in 2025. Almost none of them can establish, before committing money, whether a product is open to them.
Provider material across funds, brokers and banks
Six of 24 broker contact details on the regulator's own register did not reach the firm
An investor using the details the regulator publishes meets the same wall, without knowing why.
Writing to every licensed dealing member, August and September 2026
From the Ghana Stock Exchange's own monthly reports, assembled into a series the Exchange does not publish.
One broker averages 54% of all value traded — and swings between 20% and 79% month to month
A fifty-nine point swing with no direction is a fact about how thin the exchange is, not about how dominant any firm is. A few large trades decide who leads in any month.
Eighteen Ghana Stock Exchange monthly reports, Feb 2025 to Jul 2026
The index rose 76% in the year to July 2026 while volume fell 72%
A gain in a market that quiet is not necessarily one you can sell into.
Ghana Stock Exchange monthly reports
The smallest Ghana Gold Coin costs 8.04% more than the gold inside it, and 8.45% once a bank's fee is added
Gold is recommended to ordinary savers as protection, and the cheapest way in carries the largest premium. On 2 September 2026, the latest circular Bank of Ghana has published, the ¼ oz coin was priced at GH₵13,257.23 against GH₵12,270.44 of gold. Absa, First Atlantic and OmniBSIC each list a GH₵50 per-coin fee in their tariff guides, which takes the premium to 8.45%; the same fee adds a tenth of a point to the 1 oz coin. Absa and OmniBSIC also charge 0.15% of the London gold price to buy a coin back. Updated 28 September 2026 from 7.75% and 8.14%, at 28 August prices.
Bank of Ghana daily coin circulars against LBMA reference prices; Absa, First Atlantic and OmniBSIC tariff guides
The 91-day Treasury bill now pays less than inflation — the safest Ghanaian product loses money slowly
The 91-day bill cleared at 4.695% on 14 September against inflation of 5.0% in August — so a saver in the safest Ghanaian instrument is losing purchasing power, slowly and certainly. It paid over 20% in early 2025. Every other return on this site is shown against the same benchmark, because a nominal figure without it is half a number.
Bank of Ghana auction results against Ghana Statistical Service CPI
Gold held its value this summer and Ghanaians who owned it still lost money
The London gold price opened June at $4,545.95 an ounce and closed August at $4,568.95 — up half a percent. Over the same months the one-ounce Ghana Gold Coin fell from GH₵55,181 to GH₵53,014, down 3.93%. The difference is the cedi, which strengthened from 11.735 to the dollar to 11.215. The coin tracked the metal precisely; a currency hedge pays when the currency falls and costs you when it rises, and this quarter it rose.
Bank of Ghana daily gold coin circulars, June to August 2026
Bank of Ghana has published no gold coin price since 2 September, on a daily commitment
The Ghana Gold Coin was launched in November 2024 with a pricing circular every working day, derived from the previous day's London price and the Bloomberg exchange rate. Their notice list shows the most recent dated 2 September 2026. They may resume, but a saver holding the coin currently has no published price to value it against — and we hold 56 of those circulars because we kept them.
Bank of Ghana notice list, read 19 September 2026
Minimums and access terms, from the providers that state them.
The lowest published minimum in Ghana is GH₵1
One cedi opens and maintains a licensed money market fund, subscribed online. Ecobank's TBill4All sells government Treasury bills from GH₵5 through mobile money with no bank account.
IC's own material, September 2026
One provider publishes the whole route from abroad — and only one
Passport accepted as identification, account activated within 24 hours, funded by card or mobile money, withdrawn online. Nobody else we have checked publishes all of it.
IC's own FAQ, September 2026
Every Ghanaian provider that explains how a non-resident applies wants a different document obtained abroad — and none says what it costs
EDC want copies notarised by a foreign authority. Absa want certification by a lawyer, notary public or court of competent jurisdiction, mandatory on every account type, with the certifier contactable. Fidelity want a Power of Attorney where a mortgage applicant is non-resident. Three providers, three different instruments, each obtained abroad at the applicant's expense — and Zenith, who ask only for an emailed copy of a passport, show none of it is inevitable. On an account with no minimum balance the paperwork can cost more than the opening deposit.
EDC Stockbrokers, Absa and Fidelity, their own material, September 2026
Found by trying to look something up and failing.
Bank of Ghana publishes its lending rate return monthly and keeps no accessible archive
So nobody outside the Bank can say whether borrowing is getting cheaper — unless they happened to be collecting at the time.
Eight earlier months checked; no published notice for any
A fund cut its charge from 2.65% to 2.25% — provable only from documents we kept
Fund managers replace a factsheet rather than versioning it. Their own site shows the figure that is true today and no trace of what it was.
Two factsheets, May and June 2026
Anything we cannot show. Several things we suspect are true about Ghanaian finance are not here, because suspecting is not establishing — and a page of findings is only worth reading if everything on it survives being checked.
Where a finding turns out to be wrong we correct it and say so. That has happened, and it will again.
Not licensed by the Securities and Exchange Commission of Ghana. We publish factual comparisons of regulated products and do not provide investment advice, hold client money, or execute transactions.