Some banks in the country have developed special competitive packages for churches, with services such as moving bullion vans to churches to convey cash to the banks on Sundays and on other meeting days. This is in sharp contrast with the former situation where banks shied away from churches because churches are non-profit organizations. At least Unibank, National Investment Bank (NIB) and Zenith Bank do have those special packages for churches. Adom News has been speaking to two of those banks to find out why there is a sudden interest in churches. The banks say their motive is not to gain profit but to support the churches to organize their financial books, gain some interest on their offerings, and have access to soft loans to undertake church projects. They said it was also to help save the church leaders from the temptation of tampering with church money, and help pay church workers' salaries in a more organized manner. The Chief Executive Officer of UniBank, Mr. Ammishaddai Owusu-Amoah told Adom News UniBank’s UniChurch account was the first of its kind in the country, and comes in three forms; the UniFund account, which is a combination of current and savings account; ordinary current account, and saving account. “The UniFund account is a saving account but comes with a cheque book and gives churches open access to their money at any time, except the minimum balance is GHC500,” he said. He noted that even though the account operates like a current account, there are no maintenance charges, but the church rather gets interests on the deposit. Mrs. Patience Mills, the Business Development Manager at the Marketing Department of NIB, and she told Adom News the NIB Churchlink Account is both a current and investment account and comes with special benefits. She explained that the account comes with special daily interests but the church also has the benefit of a cheque book to cash money any time they wanted, adding there is no maintenance fee. Both Mr. Owusu Amoah and Mrs. Mills said several churches who access their respective products have obtained loans for church buildings, mission houses, church equipment, church buses, mission school projects and even cars for their pastors. They said both of their packages come with the special service called Sunday Cash Collections, where bullion vans and bank officials go to the churches on Sundays to help regularize the financial books and lift the church offerings and tithes straight to the banks. Whiles Mr. Owusu Amoah said the Sunday collection is limited to churches with bigger moneys to save, Mrs. Mills said the service is available to all churches which access the Church Link facility. Again loans to churches are at subsidized interest rates. UniBank’s base rate is currently 24.7% and that of NIB is currently 25%. Both said they do add some margins but the margins are way lower than the margins they add on loans given to commercial organizations. It is important to note that the base rates do change frequently, based on the Bank of Ghana’s Monetary Policy Committee recommendations. Both banks say the patronage of their special church products is very high, except, they do not want to release the names of churches which access the service. But are the churches really benefiting the way the banks seem to suggest they are. Rev. George Odoi is the Head Pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, Adenta, and he says the Sunday Collection service is particularly good because it ensures the safety of church moneys and help to curb the spate of armed robbery in churches. He also said they bought their church furniture overseas and the bank helped in the smooth transfer of funds from Ghana to the suppliers abroad through the Church Link Account. The church accountant, Robert Kokan said the account is truly a current and saving account so they put a portion of the money into investment on which they pay daily interest, so when their current account wing runs out they resort to the investment wing called Call Account to withdraw money. The point is that the bank only makes profit when the church takes a loan, if not the church benefits through and through, and from what UniBank boss, Ammishaddai Owusu Amoah said, some of the churches save enough and make enough interest to the extent that some of them do not need loans. Samuel Nii Narku Dowuona/Adom News/Ghana