Frank Adu Jnr, former CAL Bank Managing Director Have you ever wondered how an individual with no banking blood in his veins could transform a fledgling bank in ten years?
Frank Brako Adu Jnr, a native of old Tafo seems to have an innate instinct for what works – and what does not – at a bank. Both his father, a Presbyterian disciplinarian and mother were not finance people.
Indeed, both started off as teachers. More than that, Frank had a surgical approach to running a business, forged early in his career as a teaching assistant at Legon to becoming Managing Director at the age of 38.
The long serving Managing Director of Cal bank until his retirement last year was one of the most outspoken voices in finance. I dare say that few men ever commanded such reverence and respect in an industry as Frank Adu did in Ghana’s banking Industry. And people listened when he spoke.
That perhaps may be because he has a rare mix of charisma and intelligence. But it is mostly because he has earned the right to be listened to, having positioned Cal Bank as one of the most powerful and successful indigenous Ghanaian banks.
The Frank Adu story may have been told, but many of the statistics that back up the tale are not well known, so here is a brief summary.
30 years ago, on a sunny and bright morning in March, 23 people including Frank Adu walked into the offices of the then Continental Acceptances Limited at Pegasus House as Senior analyst, that saw the birth of Cal Bank.
In July of the same year the bank received its license to operate with 30 employees. The eye for detail and perseverance made him the blue-eyed boy of Management who hired and promoted him to treasurer in 1993. He was later appointed Deputy Managing Director in 1999 and rose to become Managing Director a year after.
Prestigious as it seemed, for Frank it was not about salaries or bonuses. It was about governance and compliance. He believed that Cal Bank could not be treated as just any other bank
So, a decade after his appointment as Managing Director the company had grown from just one to 14 branches with a thousand-fold increase in its customer base to 50,000 customers. The banks single-obligor limit had also increased by over a thousand percent to $10m while the number of shareholders also increased […]
