Are banking CEOs paid their worth?

South Africa’s big five retail banks are all big earners – and they ensure that their chief executives adequately compensated in return.

BusinessTech takes a look at the earning power of the financial institutions’ CEOs in relation to their bank’s retail customer numbers and headline earnings in the last annual reporting.

South Africa’s top five banking firms, include FNB, Standard Bank, Absa, Capitec, and Nedbank.

FNB CEO Michael Jordaan brought in R17.089 million in the bank’s last financial year – this after boosting its customer numbers to 7.5 million (from 7.1 million in 2011) and boosting the bank’s pre-tax profit to R8.293 billion from R6.529 billion before.

Capitec CEO Riaan Stassen brought in a R17.089 million salaray in the bank’s last financial year. The bank saw a big jump in customers to 4.7 million, and overtook Nedbank as the 4th biggest biggest bank in SA by marketshare, according to the latest AMPS data.

Capitec reported a total of R7.92 billion coming in from banking operations at the bank (up from R5.646 billion in 2011), though the net income for the bank sits at R5.265 billion.

Former Standard Bank CEO Jacko Maree left the bank in a favourable condition. The former chief exec was paid R18.01 million in the last financial year, while the bank boosted its headline earnings to R15 billion from R13.6 billion the year before.

With 4.2 million personal market customers and 6.2 million inclusive banking customers (totalling 10.4 million customers) Standard Bank is now the biggest retail bank in South Africa.

Standard Bank is currently the biggest company in South Africa, according to Forbes, after placing as the highest SA company on the Magazine’s 2000 biggest global companies list at 231st.

Absa Group chief executive Maria Ramos did not receive an increase in fixed remuneration during 2012 following the bank’s “disappointing” earnings last year.

The CEO pocketed R16.658 million, while the bank brought in less money than it did in the previous financial year – R7.435 million versus 2011’s R7.957 billion.

The bank also slipped below Standard Bank as the country’s biggest retail bank – of its reported 10.9 million banking customers, 10.3 million are in the South African market, 100,000 less than new leader, Standard Bank

Nedbank CEO Mike Brown was the top earner by salary in the banking sector, bringing in R28.747 million in the bank’s last financial year.

Nedbank, in a recent media statement indicated that, to date, it had increased its retail banking customers to 6.1 million, after reporting a figure of 5.9 million customers in its annual report.

The Nedbank group grew brought in a total of R7.51 billion in 2012, up from R6.184 billion in 2011.

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