Mr. Joseph Oko Lartey (Chief Executive Officer) currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer of the Central Securities Depository (GH) LTD, a position he has held since October 2023. With over 25 years of experience in the financial services industry, Mr. Lartey has a deep expertise in information technology. Before he was appointed the Chief Executive Officer of the CSD, he was an Assistant Director at the Bank of Ghana and the Head of Information Technology (IT) Operations of the Bank. Mr. Lartey has played vital roles in significant projects designed to shape the growth of Ghana’s financial industry ecosystem by the Bank of Ghana. Some of the latest projects participated in by Mr. Lartey include the ongoing SWIFT/RTGS Migration from ISO15022 to ISO20022 Messaging Standard, the Online Regulatory Analytics and Supervisory System (ORASS), and the Centralized Foreign Exchange Bureau Management System for the country.
Mr. Lartey was a core team member responsible for implementing the Central Securities Depository (CSD) project at the Bank of Ghana in 2004. Also, he was a team member who worked with the Parliamentary Sub-Committee on Finance to review and bring into being the Central Securities Depository Act 2007 (Act 733). He worked on debt instruments from his early days in the Bank, witnessing its transition from the paper-based certificates to the present electronic book entry form. He has undertaken study visits to nineteen (19) Securities Depositories and Exchanges worldwide, including STRATE in South Africa and NSDL of India.
The Bank previously seconded Mr. Lartey to serve as the first Head of the IT Department of the CSD (GH) LTD when finally, the CSD became a fully-fledged company in 2010 until 2013, when he was called back to the Bank. He has since continued to offer technical assistance to the CSD on several projects. He led the implementation of CSD’s Information Security Management System (ISO/IEC27001) and Business Continuity Management System (ISO/IEC22301). Also, he played an instrumental role in various projects at the CSD, including the Securities Depository Project and the Automated Trading System (ATS) project at the Ghana Stock Exchange. He was part of the team that facilitated the merger of the Bank of Ghana CSD and the GSE CSD into the current CSD in 2013.
Mr. Lartey is an IT specialist with a rich educational background in IT and Finance, and an alumnus of reputable institutions in the UK and Ghana. He holds a double Master, MSc. in Business Information Technologies from the University of Manchester, United Kingdom, and an MBA in Finance from the University of Ghana. He obtained his first-degree B.Sc. in Computer Science from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana. He also has qualifying certifications in ISO/IEC 27001 Lead Implementer/Leader Auditor and ISO/IEC 22301 Lead Implementer.
