Head of Mortgage Banking at Republic Bank Ghana, Dan Adjetey Mohenu, is calling on pension fund managers to make long-term funds more available to financial institutions for mortgage lending, arguing that contributors should not have to wait until retirement to benefit from their savings.
According to Adjetey, the current structure of pension contributions leaves workers locked out of the value of their own savings until they retire, despite many needing that capital far earlier to acquire a home.
Head of Mortgage Banking-Republic Bank
“The managers of pension funds should be interested in providing some of these long-term funding or making them available to financial institutions to lend,” he stated.
He explained that contributors paying into a pension scheme should be able to leverage those funds toward homeownership well before retirement age, rather than waiting decades to see any tangible benefit.
“There’s one thing me paying my pension to you, but remember that I’ll be more than excited if I can leverage that pension to acquire a home. So that I don’t necessarily have to wait till when I’m going on retirement, then I can benefit,” he added.
On technological advancement ,Adjetey called on financial institutions to come with innovative products that match the needs of their customers arguing that the technology already exists to support more flexible, accessible mortgage products.
“What we should be looking at in terms of innovation are two areas for me. One, the nature of the mortgage products that are being churned out by financial institutions. We should be very proactive in doing a lot of these things,” he further stated.
He noted that technological advancement has already transformed the front end of the mortgage process, with applications that once required physical visits to a bank branch now reduced to a matter of clicks.
“Doing a mortgage application is quite seamless. You can on your own get to understand how much you qualify for by a simple click of a button. You can submit your requirements by a single click of a button,” Adjetey cautioned.
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