The Effectiveness of Internal Control Systems of Banks. The Case of Ghanaian Banks

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Abstract
This study evaluated the control environment and monitoring activities components of Internal Control Systems of Ghanaian Banks using COSO’s principles and attributes of assessing the effectiveness of internal control systems. A five point Likert scale was used to measure respondent’s knowledge and perception of internal controls and the bank’s internal control system effectiveness. Responses ranged from strongly disagree to strongly agree, where 1 represented strongly disagree (SD) and 5 represented strongly agree (SA). Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyse data and presented in the form of means and standard deviations for each question and each section of the questionnaire. The study found out that, strong controls exist in the control environment and monitoring activities components of the internal control systems of banks in Ghana. The two components were highly rated by respondents with average means of 4.72 and 4.66 respectively. The study recommended that boards of banks in Ghana should not be complacent about the findings but should work hard to ensure continuous ongoing and separate internal control monitoring to ascertain that controls really exist and are functioning properly.