Recent cases of banks failures in Ghana have spurred up the debate about the financial stability of the Ghanaian Banking Industry. This quantitative study sought to explore the relationships between corporate governance elements, banks-specific financial proxies, and macroeconomic indicators to provide reasons for Commercial Bank’s failure in Ghana. The study sought to outline policy recommendations to strengthening the corporate governance structures of banks for a resilient financial sector in Ghana. More so, it seeks to contribute to the body of knowledge by providing understanding on factors that can contribute to banks failure in emerging economies like Ghana. A five-year (5) panel data between (2012 -2016) on twenty-one (21) banks (making a total of one hundred and five (105) observations was considered as the sample. A random effect model was used to estimate the relationship between corporate governance elements and bank’s failure. Proceeding to that, a correlation analysis was employed, to examine the relationships between corporate governance elements, banks-specific financial proxies and macroeconomic indicators and bank’s failure. The study found that there is significant relationship between corporate governance variables, banks-specific financial information and macroeconomic indicators and bank failure. The study recommends the creation of the Ghanaian Corporate Governance Act to help streamline the composition of the total governing board size for banks. The study recommends an increase in the female and non- executive director’s representations on the governing boards from the current minimum number of (1 and 3) members to a high of (6 and 7) members respectively. This is to help boost gender diversity in the boardrooms as it was evident in the study that higher gender diversity reduces the risk of bank failure.
Keywords: Corporate governance act, Governing board size, Female executive directors, Nonexecutive directors, Banks financial proxies, Macroeconomic indicators