The foreign banks, however, grew by five. Whereas no foreign bank was closed between 1997 and 2006, the following were added: Stanbic Bank in 2002, SG-SSB (through acquisition of SSB Limited, which was formerly the Social Security Bank Limited) in 2003, United Bank for Africa (UBA) in 2005, Intercontinental Bank, Ghana (IBG) and Zenith Bank in 2006. By this time it had become clear that the Ghanaian banking industry was becoming more attractive to foreign investors. .
The attraction to foreign investors continued to dominate the industry between 2007 and 2009 with the entry of the Guaranty Trust (GT) in 2007, and then Banque Sahelo-Saharienne pour l'investissement et le Commerce (BSIC) Ghana Limited also in 2007, Bank of Baroda in 2008 and later Access Bank in 2009. Metropolitan and Allied Bank (MAB) a foreign bank, which was previously BPI Bank, was acquired by the local investor, UT Financial Services to become the UT Bank. The number of banks in the industry therefore grew by over 136 per cent over the 22 year period (1989 to 2010) with the growth higher among the foreign banks of over 333 percent and 62.5 per cent for the local banks. By the end of the year 2010, there were twenty-six banks operating in Ghana, thirteen foreign and thirteen local. Compared to 1989, we can conclude that the competition in the industry has become keener especially with the entry of more foreign banks than local banks resulting in the same number of banks for both categories by 2010. Available data indicate that branches of banks grow annually. For example, in 2004 there were 360 branches of all banks in Ghana. By 2010 this number had grown to 776, which is 115.5 percent growth within a period of seven years.
Share of Customer Deposit .
Foreign banks as at 1989 had under their control about 18.3 per cent of total deposit of all commercial banks in Ghana. However, by 2010, the percentage holding of foreign banks had changed to 51.