Credit checks in Ghana fell 12% in 2025 to over 25 million, Bank of Ghana report says

Pinned summary · as of 15:52

Lenders and other authorised users ran more than 25 million credit checks in Ghana in 2025, about 12% fewer than a year earlier, according to the Bank of Ghana. The central bank linked the fall mainly to a drop in checks tied to traditional loans.

What we know

• Ghana recorded over 25 million credit enquiries in 2025, down 12.12% from the 29,496,440 logged in 2024, the central bank reported. Lenders and other authorised users ran the checks to assess loan applications, chase repayments and satisfy Know Your Customer requirements.
• Monthly enquiries averaged 2,160,089 in 2025, which is 12.1% below the 2,458,037 monthly average of 2024.
• The central bank said the fall came mostly from fewer checks connected to conventional loans, the category that used to account for the bulk of enquiry volumes.
• Banks made 86.28% of all enquiries in 2025, according to the Bank of Ghana.
• The report says the wider growth in use of credit bureau services stems mainly from the rise in digital loans offered by various lenders.
• The Bank of Ghana produced the document under Section 58 of the Credit Reporting Act, 2007 (Act 726). It surveys trends in enquiries and data submissions, how the credit bureaus performed, and what lenders and Designated Data Providers did during the year.

What's disputed / unconfirmed

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  MyJoyOnline reported that the report also credits mobile money loans and payroll lending for rising enquiries and for a 199.71% jump in credit monitoring by financial institutions; this detail has not been repeated in other reports.
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  According to MyJoyOnline, the report splits 2025 enquiries by purpose as 87.21% for credit applications, 10% for bureau searches and 3% for loan recoveries, and puts microfinance and microcredit institutions at 8.47% against 8.82% in 2024. No other report has carried these shares.
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  The Vaultz News reported that the Bank of Ghana sees the upward trend in bureau usage as proof of the credit referencing system's importance to lenders' credit administration; other reports have not repeated that assessment.

Why it matters for Ghana

Credit checks sit behind almost every loan decision, so the shift shows how borrowing is changing for Ghanaian households and small businesses. With digital and mobile money loans behind much of the growth in bureau use, a borrower's repayment record is increasingly visible to lenders, and banks remain by far the biggest users of the system.