(Business in Cameroon) - The Central African Banking Commission (Cobac) recently published a list of banks of systemic importance for the period spanning from July 1, 2019, to June 30, 2020.

By systemic importance, Cobac means institutions whose activities are so important that their bankruptcy would have a negative impact on CEMAC’s finance.

Cameroon hosts eight of the ten banks Cobac thinks should not go out of business within the region in the above mentioned period.

In the category of “average systemic importance,” there is Afriland First Bank (Cameroon) and BGFIBank Gabon. For the time being, the region does not have a financial institution of high systemic importance.

The remaining institutions are in the low systemic importance category. They are BGFIBank Congo, CCEI Bank Equatorial Guinea, Commercial Bank Chad, Ecobank Cameroon, Société commerciale de Banque Cameroon, Société Générale de Banques Cameroon and Standard Chartered Bank Cameroon.

Cobac bases its ranking on the size (total assets), interconnection (exposure to the financial sector and debt owed to it), complexity, substantiality and international operations

According to the Cobac, an institution is without systemic importance when its cumulated score equals or is below 300 (out of 1,000). This means that out of the 53 banks operating within CEMAC, only ten should not go bankrupt. Cameroon is thus important for the region’s banking and finance sector with its eight banks of systemic importance.

Sylvain Andzongo