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Staying Informed About Personal Financial Issues

Information Sources for Finance

Chart 1


If survey respondents are to be believed, information about personal financial topics is hard to come by in Ghana. As noted previously, about half of all respondents said they pay a great deal of attention to news items about business and the economy. However, when asked about common personal financial topics, many said they do not get information frequently, or at all (Chart 1).
For those who did get information about personal finance, the most common sources were radio and TV, followed by word-of-mouth with friends and family, bankers, and colleagues. New technologies—internet and SMS text services—were mentioned by less than 1 percent of respondents for any financial topic.

Mobile money services—one of the hottest topics in African development since the introduction and rapid growth of mobile phone financial services in some African countries—generates very little recognition in Ghana: about 80 percent of all respondents said they have not seen any information on this topic. In fact, mobile money services have only very recently become available in Ghana (MTN reportedly introduced the first formal services at about the time the survey field work was under way in summer 2009). [1]

Chart 2


Regarding the financial information that is filtering through to most Ghanaians, survey respondents indicated that they received more about bank accounts than about other topics (see Chart 1)

Note that there are really two distinct sectors providing “banking” services in Ghana: a formal one comprising banks and credit unions, and an informal one represented by small savings clubs and “susu” (typically, local actors working in marketplaces who hold small savings accounts for people). The users of each banking sector will be described more fully in the case study at the end of this chapter.

Respondents were more likely to get information about formal banking than informal banking from radio, TV, or experts (bankers). Logically, word-of-mouth networks were more likely to be mentioned as sources of information about informal than formal finance, as shown in Chart 3.

Indeed, friends and family were as important a source of information about informal savings and borrowing as radio. A sizable share of respondents had also gotten information about informal finance from susu collectors themselves—far more than had gotten information about formal banking from bankers.

Chart 3


Although other people were among the most important sources for information about informal savings and borrowing, word-of-mouth communication about finance does not actually seem widespread (Chart 4). Only 37 percent of respondents said they discussed personal finance with their friends or family on a regular basis (responses of “often” or “very often”).

Chart 4


With relatively little communication underway about financial topics, one might expect to find lower levels of trust in and satisfaction with information about finance than about other topics—and indeed they are low (Chart 5).

However, these levels are somewhat misleading for such topics as government payments and pensions , and mobile money, as over half of respondents answered “do not know” in those categories. The highest levels of actual dissatisfaction were for information about informal borrowing and saving (18 percent and 16 percent of respondents, respectively).

Chart 5


When asked more broadly about their opinion of various institutions, a large share of respondents said they trusted banks and financial institutions somewhat or completely. However, their trust in banks as institutions does not seem to translate into trust in bankers for expert guidance on personal financial topics—a much smaller share (60 percent) said they trust the financial information they get from bankers or financial advisors (see more about trusts in other institutions here).

Significantly, financial information supplied by experts (in this case, bankers) does not get a better trust rating than information provided by friends and family or media outlets (Table 1). This is contrary to what respondents said when asked about information on other topics such as health.

Table 1


Rural residents were less likely than urban residents to view banks or the financial information they provide as trustworthy; the same was true of people with no formal education compared with respondents with any formal education. These results suggest that if banks and financial institutions want to improve their public image and standing, rural and uneducated adults should be prime targets.

“MTN Launches MTN Mobile Money” About MTN: Press Releases. http://www.mtn.com.gh/NewsArtDetails.aspx?AID=112&ID=&CID=38&MID=11&FirstParentID=11 and “Ghana: MTN Introduced MTN Mobile Money Banking,” AllAfrica.com 23 July 2009. http://allafrica.com/stories/200907230935.html