Nsoatreman Rural Bank in Brong Ahafo on Tuesday launched a new product at Chiraa aimed at encouraging customers to cultivate the habit of savings and mobilizing excess liquidity in the system. As part of the product, new customers could open savings account with deposits as low as GH¢1.00 (10,000 cedis). Speaking at the launch, Mr Philip Appiah-Mensah, General Manager of the Bank, said the initiative aimed at allaying the notion of the communities that one could only transact business with a bank with large sums of money. He said the bank's management came up with the idea after realizing that members of the community were eager to open account with the Bank, but they held back their plans because they thought they needed huge deposits. "The product is meant to make deposits as easy as possible and to open easy access to the Bank so that irrespective of your financial standing or economic activity, one can patronize the banking industry," Mr Appiah-Mensah added. He said the new product would be replicated in other agencies of the Bank at Jinijini, Yamfo, Techiman, Nsoatre and Sunyani. Mr Appiah-Mensah expressed the hope that more people would be encouraged to use the Bank's services to boost their economic activities, adding that some 100 women traders had opened new accounts under the new product. Madam Georgina Gyamfi, a fishmonger and a customer of the Bank since 2004, lauded its innovativeness, saying she had personally benefited from a GH¢200 (two million cedis) loan by expanding her business with two additional storerooms, which in turn generated money for her children's school fees. In a related development, staff of the Nsoatreman Rural Bank are educating women groups on effective leadership skills that would help them to adopt the best options in productive ventures. They are also taught bookkeeping, product costing, entrepreneurship, health and nutrition, HIV/AIDS prevention and other health related issues. Mr Appiah-Mensah told newsmen the programme aimed at reducing poverty among the women and that more than 3,000 women had benefited. He said the Bank was giving out credits to the women without any collateral, using the group as security. "If any member fails to pay back the loan granted, the group she belongs will either use her savings to defray the debt or put pressure on her to pay back promptly," Mr. Appiah-Mensah said, adding that the recovery rate was about 98 percent. Source: GNA