Deputy Managing Director of the ARB Apex Bank, Mr Osam-Duodu, says some national service persons and interns and working with the bank are engaged in some fraudulent activities which are adversely affecting the bank. According to him, the perpetrators intercept cheques from clearing, destroy statements collected from the Apex Bank Clearing Centres, clone and falsify advices, and use the names of known persons at either the Apex Bank or Bank of Ghana to solicit fraudulent assistance from the rural banks. He noted that in view of this, various circulars have been issued advising rural banks to be on the lookout for such fraudsters while rural bank managers check properly the validity of all credit advices from the Apex Bank and cheques with the value of more than GH¢1,000. Mr Osam-Duodu was addressing the 25th Anniversary and 21st Annual General Meeting of the Ahantaman Rural Bank at Agona Nkwanta, on Saturday. He also revealed that one hundred and twenty-four rural banks now deliver foreign money remittances through the Western Union Money Transfer system with 350 payment points. According to him, plans are underway to include the other banks as the service has brought a big relief to people in rural areas who used to travel to towns and cities before having access to money remitted from abroad. He said the ARB Apex Bank is transferring its Apex Link Money Transfer product as well as the Western Union Product onto an ICT platform to improve on its services. Meanwhile, the bank recorded a growth in its income of GH¢2,230,078 for 2008 as against GH¢1,982,134 for 2007 as revealed by Mr John Dadzie, Chief Executive Officer of the Bank. This, he noted, was against the backdrop of significant operational challenges from both external and internal sources. He stated said the profit after tax, however, dropped from GH¢534,533 in 2007 to GH¢403,457 in2008. The reasons for the decline include poor performance of the bank's micro finance product, the Strategic Group Lending, which was launched in 2007. According to him, most groups fail to repay credits advanced to them and the problem is deepened by poor monitoring of group activities, which is as a result of the lack of logistics. Mr Dadzie added that growth in operating expenditure over income also hit the bank's financial performance in 2008, due to increase in staff costs and administrative expenses. He said the strategies for 2009 are yielding positive results and the profit before tax as at September 2009 stood at GH¢629,078.85. Mr. Dadzie said total assets grew from GH¢8,163,402 in 2007 to GH¢10,261,835 last year. Further, Mr Joshua Ackah, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bank, stated the directors had proposed a dividend of 0.0151 Ghana Cedis per share amounting to GH¢242,326 as against a total of GH¢190,275 for 2007. He said the bank spent GH¢17,257 in support of its corporate social responsibility in 2008, as against GH¢18,050 in 2007. In its 25 years of operation, the bank has spent a total of GH¢59,075 in support of institutional and community development projects and programmes. Source: B&FT