Banking leadership is usually difficult to reduce to a single measure. But PwC Ghana’s latest Banking Survey presents an unusual picture: four of the industry’s major market-share indicators ended 2025 with the same bank, GCB Bank PLC, at the top.
The 2026 Banking Sector Survey ranked GCB first in four key industry metrics for the 2025 financial year: deposits, loans and advances, operating assets, and total operating income.
The result is unusual in its breadth – the same institution tops the funding, lending, operating-asset, and income tables. GCB held 12.37 percent of industry deposits, 1.85 percentage points higher than the closest competitor at 10.52 percent, and 17.8 percent of loans and advances, compared with 14.2 percent for the second-ranked bank in this category. GCB also accounted for 12.3 percent of the industry’s operating assets, against 10.8 percent for number two. GCB’s share of industry operating income also rose to 14.2 percent in 2025, up from 12.5 percent in 2024.
Taken together, the rankings offer a view of the franchise from both sides of the balance sheet: a large deposit base provides funding capacity, while GCB’s lending, operating-asset and income shares indicate the scale at which that capacity is being deployed.
That matters at a time when the economics of banking in Ghana are changing. PwC’s central argument is that falling rates are beginning to test a banking model still heavily dependent on interest income. The report argues that banks will increasingly need to combine balance-sheet strength with stronger asset deployment, broader revenue sources and better operating efficiency as margins tighten. With roughly seven out of every ten cedis of industry income still linked to interest, the value of scale will increasingly depend on how efficiently banks can deploy it as margins narrow.
GCB’s profitability numbers add another layer to that picture. PwC reports that the Bank’s return on equity increased from 29.8 percent in 2024 to 34.0 percent in 2025, the highest among banks in its first-quartile peer group. The result suggests that the expansion in scale was accompanied by a higher return on shareholder equity, even as the industry moved into a lower-rate environment.
Commenting on the findings, GCB Bank Managing Director Farihan Alhassan said the Bank viewed its market position as carrying a wider responsibility.
“Our continued leadership across key balance-sheet indicators reflects the trust customers place in GCB and the strength of our strategy and people. We value this trust and remain committed to deepening customer relationships and supporting businesses and households.”
He added that the Bank’s focus remains on customer-led growth, digital transformation and strengthening its people and culture as competition across the industry intensifies.
GCB’s half-year results suggest the momentum has carried into 2026. By June, customer deposits had reached GH¢51.49 billion and net loans and advances GH¢22.19 billion, while the NPL ratio declined to 4.7 percent. Operating income rose 36.1 percent year-on-year and profit before tax increased 45.8 percent.
The PwC rankings therefore provide a useful picture of where GCB ended in 2025. The more important question is what the Bank does with that position as industry conditions change. In a lower-rate environment, size alone will matter less. The real differentiator will be the ability to turn deposits into productive assets, those assets into sustainable income, and scale into consistent returns without allowing asset quality to weaken.
PwC’s 2025 rankings show that GCB enters that transition with considerable scale. What matters next is how productively that scale is used.
Source: businesspostonline
