Twenty-two persons have graduated from an employee-talent development initiative by the Amenfiman Rural Bank for 2020.

Dubbed the Amenfiman Talent Academy Program, this year’s graduation class is the second cohort of the two-year program launched in 2015.

The bank partnered with the China-Europe Business School (CEIBS) in Accra to run the second cohort, which enrolled the 22 persons in 2018.

The aim of the Talent Management Program is to identify talents within the bank, develop them with the competencies and skills, knowledge and attitude required to drive the strategies and vision of the bank.

It is also to ensure that the bank has leaders who are ready to take up positions and ensure that the business continuity strategy of the bank is always there.

ATAP Program

Launched in 2015, only 18 graduated from the 22 people that enrolled in the first cohort.

CEO, Dr Alex Asmah, says they have been very impactful to the business.

“Today, they are holding critical roles in the bank. It gives us confidence that when we continue to invest in developing people, we will be able to secure the bank's future.

I hold a strong conviction that Success without succession is failure, so we continue to make sure that beyond us the business will continue to thrive and be successful”.

This second cohort had all 22 students enrolled and graduated. Even before their graduation from the two year journey, they had already developed the capacity to occupy important roles in the bank.

Dr Asmah says this initiative of the company is to ensure that in the future, “we don’t fill the top and middle leadership roles from the outside except for a critical role we don’t have. All the competencies we need to grow as a bank, we are growing them here”.

He continued that, “We always hire the graduates from the university and train them to become the people we want and when we do that, we are able to imbibe our culture and way of doing things into them”.

Today, the ATAP has in total 44 people skilled and specially developed over four years, now holding fort for the bank.

According to him, it is a good strategy for the bank because the human resource is the bank's most important asset.

“…to us, our asset is not the cash or vehicle or beautiful building, but our best most important asset is, invest in the people to make them better than they came”.

Impact of Covid-19

The first batch of the program that started in 2016 and graduated in 2018 saw 16 people go through the process successfully.

The second batch which started in 2018 was expected to complete by 2020 until covid-19 struck, which forced graduation to extend to 2021.

Four out of the twenty-two graduated have already received appointments to higher positions in other financial institutions.

The ATAP program is meant to train high potential employees to occupy all the various levels of management when there is a vacancy.

Head of Human Relations and Administration, Anthony Adu Broni, says the program is critical to ensure the bank stays competitive in the industry.

“We believe that this ATAP program will be a very important catalyst to push us into a level that will help us achieve our business objectives and give us the competitive advantage in the industry.

We are doing this so that come the next two years, Amenfiman Rural Bank will be a net exporter of talents and wherever you find yourself in the industry you will find an Amenfiman product”.

Board Chairman of the bank, Dr Tony Aubynn, emphasized that the bank will consolidate it gains and continue to invest in its people.

"We intend to consolidate our gains. We have always focused on the quality of the bank. The quality of a bank is not how much money it has collected but the quality of people that collected it.

It is not how much profit you have made, it is the quality of the people that made it. So the growth, and all are dependent on the quality of the staff. So we are excited and we will continue to invest in our people. We cannot be successful without succession", he added.

Acting Managing Director At Arb Apex Bank, Alex Awuah, advised sister RCBs to emulate the steps of Amenfiman Rural Bank.

“I wish to advise sister RCB to pick a leaf from some of the strategic initiatives from Amenfiman Rural Bank.”

To employees who have gone through the program, must be worthy ambassadors first for the bank and then customers.

“Dedicate and seek always to delight your customers”.

The Future

The plan of Amenfiman Rural Bank is to become the net exporter of quality human resource into the rural bank fraternity.

Head of Human Relations and Administration, Anthony Adu Broni, explained the move is to prevent a situation the company would have to hire the best people from outside.

“…so we create a situation where in the next five years, the CEOs and Managers in the banking industry will be graduates from the Amenfiman Talent Academy. So we want to develop people not only for the rural banking industry but for the entire banking industry. So we do not really get worried when people leave.”

Management and Board of the bank plans to develop talents and people with competency and skills in abundance so that other sister banks can come poach and benefit from.

“We believe that not training people is even expensive that training people, because when you train and they leave they leave to become better people. So our focus is that we train with a vision and mission, that the people we train we have to maintain them, take good care of them and keep them”.

Graduates are given responsibilities that commensurate their skills, knowledge and attributes they have and by so doing they become happy and comfortable.

“So the focus is that you hire, train, maintain and keep, and at the time you have too many of talents you begin to give some to the industry”, he said.

The ATAP program has become the go-to for every employee.