Fidelity Bank & GIZ Champion Financial Literacy In Five Regions Of Ghana Fidelity Bank, in partnership with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, has held an inception workshop for the rollout of their joint financial literacy campaign. Through this partnership, Fidelity and GIZ hope to impact over 400,000 people in the Greater Accra, Western, Ashanti, Eastern and Central regions over the next two years. The aim of this project is to provide the public, especially the unbanked and under-banked persons, with information and advice on the benefits and appropriate use of financial services and products, particularly savings, investments, loans and micro insurance. The project is jointly financed by Fidelity Bank’s Financial Inclusion Department and GIZ under its Development Partnership with the Private Sector (DPP) programme. The concept is to leverage Fidelity Bank’s innovative Agency Banking service and Smart Account product to deliver tailor-made financial literacy material to the informal sector. Currently, in under a year, Fidelity has approximately 100,000 Smart Accounts and 200 Smart Agents open nationwide. The crux of the project will be the training of Smart Agents and Smart Friends (Fidelity Sales Ambassadors who open Smart Accounts) as financial literacy ambassadors. Amongst others, there will be market storms, screening of videos and distribution of printed materials in select communities. The Project Manager of the Programme for Sustainable Economic Development (PSED) at GIZ, Hartwig Michaelsen, commenting on the unique nature of this partnership, commended Fidelity Bank for boldly pioneering the Agency Banking model in Ghana and going a step further to forge strategic partnerships to facilitate the bridging of the gap between the banked and unbanked. Fidelity Bank’s Director of Financial Inclusion, Dr. William Derban, added that the project is all-inclusive and not solely focused on current or prospective customers of Fidelity.
