Africa’s Top 100 Banks 2020: Weathering the storm
How resilient are Africa’s top banks in the face of Covid- 19? Our 2020 survey highlights the longer- term trends transforming banking in Africa.
This year’s survey of Africa’s Top 100 Banks looks beyond the doom and gloom of the pandemic, with a ranking based on financial results which nearly all predate the virus’ choking effects on individuals and economies.
The good news is that going into the pandemic the banks were on the whole better capitalised than they have been in the last 10 years. The 2020 ranking also highlights the longer- term trends transforming banking in Africa, which will reassert themselves as economies recover and some accelerate out of the pandemic.
The number of banks in Africa is declining, even as the amount of people with access to financial services and the number of financial transactions soars – it’s a good thing on the whole as you have bigger and stronger banks.
For example, Nigeria has seen the number of banks fall from 89 in 2004 to 27 in February. More consolidation is predicted – between 2016 and February 2020, Kenya saw 10 mergers or acquisitions and three bank failures. In many countries, banks with heavy fixed costs from “bricks and mortar” branches have been facing headwinds.
Competitive banks are riding the wave of innovation and digitisation and competing with fintechs forcing the pace of change. South Africa’s
As a lead state revenue collector, Botswana Unified Revenue Service ( BURS) strives to effectively and rigorously administer and enforce taxation laws and provides for the assessment and collection of tax on behalf of the Government. The organisation has rolled out its long- term strategic plan and therefore seeks to appoint seasoned, dedicated, decisive, results oriented, influential leaders to the positions listed and described below to join their high performing leadership bench.
TymeBank, an exclusively digital cloudbased retail bank, announced in July it had reached 2m customers – including 18,000 small businesses – ahead of its scheduled plan for December.
Only launched in February 2019, it said it was adding 6,000 customers each working day, including some 400,000 during lockdown, and had attracted R10bn ($ 613m) in deposits.
Africa’s best- known banking revolution is already a teenager. In 2007, Kenya’s Commercial Bank of Africa launched a partnership with Safaricom that gave rise to the M- Pesa and M- Shwari mobile money banking products. According to the Central Bank of Kenya, by July 2020 there were 62m mobile money accounts and 234,700 mobile money agents. During 2019 there were 1.8bn mobile money transactions totalling $ 42.9bn across all providers, some 45 percent of gross domestic product ( GDP).
This year, many countries have encouraged a switch to mobile payments to avoid Covid- 19 infection risks from handling cash, and mobile money operators waived charges for some during the peak months. Social welfare payments were also dispensed through digital platforms, a trend unlikely to reverse.
Despite fintech innovation, banks still hold a clear advantage and their relevance and dominant positions are not under threat just yet. Country and regional leaders continue to grow and make profits, as shown by the stability in top rankings on the tables over the years. In addition, many of the giants are accelerating their digital transformations, creating fintech labs within their organisations or working closely with fintechs to create new products.
The rankings can be affected by currency swings. 2019 saw less exchange- rate volatility for African countries against the US dollar than in previous years. Bank financial results and balance sheets are rebased to US dollars for ease of comparison. In particular, the rand- dollar rate strengthened slightly, after a heavy fall the year before.