Investigation and Consumer Reporting Office (ICRO)
Who We Are
The Investigation and Consumer Reporting Office (ICRO) is the financial industry watchdog office of the Bank of Ghana (BOG), with responsibility for protecting consumers of financial products/services and educating them on their rights and responsibilities. It is an office within the Banking Supervision Department (BSD).
Why We Are Here
In line with the Mission Statement of BOG, ICRO was established with the broad objective of promoting Confidence, Discipline and Harmony in the Banking Industry.
Our Objectives
We guarantee the satisfaction of consumers of financial products and services. Specifically, we are:
- To receive customers' complaints, petitions and grievances for redress.
- To serve as the main watchdog body in the banking industry responsible for guaranteeing high quality services by banks.
- To protect the rights of customers and to serve as an advisory body for educating customers on their rights and responsibilities.
- To instill price and monetary discipline in the industry.
- To receive and review fraud and defalcation reports from banks for the sake of determining the sophistry, nature and scope of bank/financial frauds, the frequency of these frauds and culprits involved.
- To investigate all forms of complaints and alleged irregularities between and among parties in the banking industry.
- To maintain a database of ex-bank employees who were either dismissed or were made to resign for fraudulent purposes, to prevent their recycling in the industry.
Our Structure
The ICRO functions under three units:
- Consumer Reporting Unit (CRU) – Responsible essentially for consumer education and for redress of consumer complaints.
- Fraud Investigation Unit (FIU) – Responsible for investigations of inter- and intra-bank frauds, defalcations and embezzlements.
- Enforcement and Surveillance Unit (ESU) – Responsible for financial intelligence and collaboration with the security agencies, maintenance of a database of dismissed employees of banks and for determining early warning signals in the banking systems and flagging problem banks.