Banking

FNB’s new Aspire account vs Capitec, Absa, Standard Bank and Nedbank

Staff Writer

 ·1 Jun 2021

Retail banking group FNB has retired its middle market Gold Account, and replaced it with a new offering called Aspire.

FNB Aspire will carry a reduced monthly account at R99 (from R109 for the Gold Unlimited account) and will be available to customers who earn between R180,000 and R450,000 per annum. Notably, the monthly fee is up from the R89 per month Gold Fusion account, which along with Gold Unlimited, falls away.

Account holders will need to make at least three transactions a month via the app to qualify.

One of the key differences between Aspire and the retired Gold accounts is that the eBucks rewards scheme has been reworked. Previously account holders would need to meet certain transaction and spending thresholds to climb different reward tiers to earn eBucks.

Under the new system, account holders need only spend in four categories to earn a maximum of R150 back in eBucks each month. The eBucks can also be used to pay banking fees. Along with other rewards – like airtime and data tied to FNB Connect – the bank claims customers are getting triple the value for the monthly fee it charges.

However, when looking at the actual fees being charged for transactions, customers will find themselves in familiar territory, with the same bundled transactions as before, and increases for the most commonly used services, such as withdrawals and deposits.

Other less notable increases include:

• Linked petrol card increasing from R20 (Gold) to R23 (Aspire);
• Petrol card fuel purchases increasing from R5.75 (Gold) to R6.00 (Aspire);
• Branch and International fees increasing by 25c on the retired Gold account formulae;
• Stop payments increasing from R26 (Gold) to R30 (Aspire);
• Interim/Provisional statements increasing from R18.20 per page (Gold) to a flat rate of R40 per statement (Aspire).

FNB’s Aspire banking charges can be found here. A comparison of select transactions, and a pay-as-you-use basis (excluding bundles) is in the table below:

* First R3,000 is free per month

FNB’s limited price restructuring comes on the back of its competitors also realigning their offerings after a difficult 2020 for customers. On a per-transaction basis, FNB’s Aspire account sits side-by-side with most other middle market accounts in terms of pricing.

Many of the adjustments or concessions made by the banks on transaction fees for 2020/21 came in the form of price freezes on monthly charges – while some banks restructured their fees entirely.

Absa postponed its pricing review in 2020 while it reassessed its value proposition to customers, announcing new prices in March 2021, two months after they would typically come into effect. The result was the zero-rating of some transactions (like point of sale charges), but withdrawals and deposits saw increases.

Nedbank kept most of its prices the same, while Discovery Bank did not change its fee structures at all. Capitec reduced withdrawal fees and zero-rated more transactions. As Capitec’s Global One account targets both middle market and entry-level banking customers, its lower fees compare favourably to other middle market accounts.

Standard Bank, meanwhile, changed its fee structure to be more uniform across different accounts, bringing its withdrawal fees in its Elite middle-market account in-line with its entry level accounts. This resulted in a significant reduction in fees for the middle market account.