Intellidex, a specialist financial services research house has conducted a survey of South Africa’s banking sector, naming Capitec Bank as the best bank in the country.
According to Intellidex, the purpose of the Bank of the Year survey was primarily to garner banking clients’ views on their banks across a range of products and service offerings. They polled 1,021 customers on which banks provide the best service in transactional accounts, home loans, car finance and other products.
Capitec took the top spot despite being the smallest and newest of the banks with average scores for each of its products collectively higher than those of other the banks. FNB came in second, Nedbank third, and Standard Bank fourth with Absa coming up in last position.
Capitec’s win can possibly be attributed to its simplistic approach to banking with clear product offerings and “man-on-the-street” appeal. While other banks, such as Absa and Standard Bank, were called out for having high fees, poor service, and bad communication with clients.
These findings show that Capitec is obviously doing something right in the banking sector. This can also been seen in the massive growth they have been experiencing recently. Every month Capitec signs up 100,000 new customers and in the next year they plan to add 55 branches to their current countrywide network of 630.
With ambitions to be the largest retail bank by 2020, and their sights set on a 25% market share (their current market share is 12.7%, up from 9.2% in 2012) they are hungry for further growth. The main limitation on that growth at the moment is that they do not provide credit cards, car loans or home loans, unlike their larger rivals, but they are reportedly investigating all these offering.
The findings of the survey are also in accordance with those of the SA Customer Satisfaction index, which was released recently.
The index found Capitec was the best performer with a score of 81.5 out of 100, and had increased by a statistically-significant 3.2% in 2012. Overall, Capitec’s score was 7.8% above the industry average.
