Listed bank, Cal Bank PLC and the UK Ghana Chamber of Commerce have held a thought leadership programme on Good Corporate Governance.

The goals of the programme was to explore and provide best practices for effective corporate governance, including the parties responsible for its implementation and monitoring in corporate organizations; discuss past corporate governance failings, the responses, and implications of these failings and get a good understanding of the status of good corporate governance reforms in public institutions as well as provide an open platform for participants to share feedback and their expectations of government.

An expert in corporate governance, Catherine Engmann, who is the Head of Sirdar Ghana Limited said corporate institutions should follow the required processes to make their companies succeed.

According to her, the values of the board members are very important if corporate governance is to be efficient and successful.

“I have an expression that corporate governance doesn’t work. What is more important is the values of the leaders in the boardroom. You can have all the right governance, framework and processes, but if the values of the leaders do not align, then corporate governance does not work”.

“In terms of balancing the board, you need to look at the values of the person - the board member, their skills and their assessment you can use to do that. Not just the core skills, but also what specialised skills do they have; do you need the legal experience, do you need them to work in a telecom’s company and diversity. Diversity is not about gender or tribe but diversity of thought” Mrs. Engman said.

She also expressed worry about the disconnection between the board of directors of companies and their values, which she described has become the bane for most institutions.

She pointed out that the best frameworks might be in place to ensure adherence to corporate governance, but it’s only achievable when members are aligned.

For Felix Ntrakwah, Founder of Corporate Law Institute, every institution has a social responsibility towards its environment and must not disregard the community as their works have an impact on society.

"Companies that don't have structures, whose boards don't function and whose managing director is the board chair, running several offices have big problems”, adding “if an individual is running a business, to whom is this individual accountable to”. 

The Chief Risk Officer of Cal Bank, Barbara Benson, said the tenets of risk management is all about identifying,  monitoring,  treating,  improving processes, but it has about four important elements that every enterprise risk framework should have.

“Talking about the framework itself…that's the structure, all the processes we put in place, the policies that should guide the organisation in taking risk”.

 The Cal Bank and UKGCC Leadership Conversation Series was organised to provide a platform for attendees to understand the importance and benefits of good corporate governance and implement an effective corporate governance structure for their organisations, including how to establish effective Board and Audit Committees.