She takes over from Joana Mensah, who is the immediate past
acting managing director, a position she assumed on 15 August 2023, following
the retirement of the former managing director, Dan Sackey.
Abena Osei-Poku is an accomplished pan-African business
leader with over 25 years of experience in the financial services industry. Her
expertise spans corporate and investment banking, business banking and risk
management at the regional level.
She started her career as a private banker with First
Atlantic Merchant Bank. She later joined Standard Chartered Bank Ghana as an
assistant relationship manager and then became the credit manager for
multinational corporates.
She subsequently served as the head of the Group Special
Assets Risk Management (SARM) department in Ghana from 2001 – 2002 and
thereafter took up oversight responsibility for the West Africa and Central
Africa regions.
In 2005, she became the Director for Global Corporates,
Wholesale Bank. After spending 10 years at Standard Chartered Bank Ghana, she
was appointed by Barclays Bank Ghana as the executive director for commercial
banking, responsible for corporate and business banking.
Abena Osei-Poku became the co-regional head of coverage,
corporate and investment banking at Absa Bank Group (formerly Barclays Bank) in
2016 overseeing East and West Africa.
She was later appointed as CEO and managing director of Absa
Bank Ghana, a position she held until her recent appointment by Ecobank.
Osei-Poku has broad board level experience, having
previously sat on boards in telecommunications, banking, commerce, and
hospitality.
She is currently the chairperson of the advisory board of
the College of Health Sciences, University of Ghana and the outgoing
chairperson for the council of the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE).
In addition, she is an honorary member of the Chartered
Institute of Bankers as well as an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute
of Marketing, Ghana and serves on other executive fora.
Osei-Poku holds an MBA from Manchester Business School, UK
and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Statistics from the University of
Ghana.