Battle of the banks 2024: Capitec vs Standard Bank vs FNB vs Absa vs Nedbank
South Africa’s big banks have weathered some rough seas in the past year, with customers coming under severe strain due to the stagnant economy, the rising cost of living, and high interest rates.
Despite this, the finance powerhouses in the country have put in a resilient performance so far in 2024, which looks set to continue until the end of the year.
2024 has seen some significant changes in the banking space—Capitec has made a copncerted push into the business banking space, Discovery Bank has hit a 1 million customer milestpone, and TymeBank has drawn significant investment.
In addition, South Africa is still expecting at least one more bank to launch before the close of 2024.
Old Mutual is set to launch its official banking offering in the coming months, and looking even further ahead, the likes of Postbank, the Young Women in Business Network (YWBN) and the Department of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities’ SA Innovative Financial Services Cooperative (SAIFSC) bank are also on the way.
Despite the shifts and changes, though, South Africa’s big five banks remain squarely in the driving seat, holding billions of rands in assets and serving a collective x million customers.
With FirstRand being the last of the big banks to publish its full-year results, we finally have a fuller view of their performance in the last financial year.
BusinessTech looked at the big five and measured their heft across 12 key metrics to determine which can truly call themselves the “biggest of the big banks”.
The data below covers both group and South African operations – for example, group data was used for employees and finances, while South African data was taken for customer numbers. FNB is represented by FirstRand Group, but FNB branches and ATMs were used for the figures. Share prices, market cap and P/E rations were taken from Google Finance data.
The data covers the following reporting periods:
- FirstRand – FY 2024 (ended June)
- Capitec – FY 2024 (ended February)
- Absa – FY 2023 (ended December)
- Nedbank – FY 2023 (ended December)
- Standard Bank – FY 2023 (SA) (ended December)
Market capitalisation and P/E ratio
Back in 2017, Capitec had the smallest market capitalisation among the big five retail banks but has since climbed to third-largest by this metric.
While Capitec was third in 2023 as well, the group has seen a staggering jump in its valuation, surging over 75% to R350 billion in 2024.
To put this into greater context, the bank is now only R34 billion away from Standard Bank (from the R100 billion separation before).
FirstRand, however, has solidified its position as the most valuable bank on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
When it comes to share price, Capitec far surpasses its peers.
The group shot past the R1,000 per share mark in 2018 and now sits close to R2,987 a share—by far the highest among the big banks.
However, this also makes Capitec the most expensive when looking at the price over earnings (P/E) ratio, almost double the next in line.
The P/E ratio is the ratio for valuing a company that measures its current share price relative to its per-share earnings. The ‘cheapest’ stock among the banks is Absa, with a P/E of 7.07.
| Bank | Market Cap | Share price | P/E Ratio |
| FirstRand | R483.5 billion | R84.21 | 12.7 |
| Standard Bank | R383.5 billion | R230.45 | 8.7 |
| Capitec | R350.0 billion | R2,986.64 | 32.7 |
| Absa | R149.1 billion | R164.87 | 7.07 |
| Nedbank | R140.2 billion | R284.80 | 8.2 |
Group Finances
While South Africa’s banks have had to grapple with consumers under strain in the past year, which has been particularly evident in growing credit loss ratios and impairment charges, their financial performance in 2023/24 does not point to businesses under strain.
Standard Bank is again the top earner when it comes to income and headline earnings, reflecting the scale of its operations.
However, when it comes to headline earnings per share, Capitec takes the win.
| Bank | Total Income | Headline Earnings | HEPS (cents) |
| Standard Bank | R177.6 billion | R42.9 billion | 2,590 |
| FirstRand | R128.8 billion | R38.1 billion | 679 |
| Absa | R104.5 billion | R20.9 billion | 2,477 |
| Nedbank | R70.2 billion | R15.7 billion | 3,312 |
| Capitec | R27.3 billion | R10.6 billion | 9,171 |
Core capital and ROE
The Banker’s top 1000 banks report is based on a measure of a bank’s Tier 1 Capital – known as core capital, which consists of shareholders’ equity and retained earnings.
South Africa’s banking sector is again led by Standard Bank, which retains its position as the biggest bank in the country when measuring capital.
This is followed by FirstRand, which retains its number two spot.
For 2024 we have continued to include Return on Equity (ROE) as a measure in this analysis. ROE is considered a gauge of a corporation’s profitability and efficiency in generating profits.
The higher the ROE, the more efficient a company’s management is at generating income and growth from its equity financing.
Among the SA banks, Capitec carries the highest ROE.
| Bank | Tier 1 Capital ($m) | ROE (%) |
| Standard Bank | $11,923 | 18.8% |
| FirstRand | $9,669 | 20.1% |
| Absa | $7,912 | 15.3% |
| Nedbank | $5,620 | 15.1% |
| Capitec | $2,045 | 26.0% |
Network
While the big banks face pressure from digital players, they still maintain wide networks of physical points of presence while also making digital interactions more accessible.
Several groups – like Nedbank, FNB and Capitec – have worked to integrate digital with physical access; for a lot of South Africans, interacting with a real person remains an integral way to deal with their money.
The banks have made it clear that a physical presence is still vital to servicing customers. Branches and ATMs are still crucial to operations and, in some cases, even expanding.
However, the big banks have also made a concerted effort to decrease physical scale – whether this is through reducing the number of branches and ATMs they operate, or recuding the actual square meterage of the infrastructure they occupy.
Standard Bank has the most physical branches available out of the big five, while Capitec has the most auto-teller machines.
Notably, the latter has standardised the fees it charges when using any and all ATMs in the country, meaning that any ATM—including competitor machines—could be counted as a Capitec ATM.
In lieu of growing ATM networks, newer digial entrants use retail networks—like Pick n Pay and Shoprite—as their de facto points of presence. This is also applicable to the big banks.
| Bank | Branches | ATMS |
| Standard Bank (SA) | 652 | 3 548 |
| Capitec | 866 | 8 382 |
| Absa | 618 | 5 250 |
| FirstRand (FNB) | 623 | 4,750 |
| Nedbank | 547 | 4,199 |
People
One of the most common ways to determine the size of a bank is to look at its customer base.
This metric is becoming an interesting game among all banks in South Africa, with the digital-only bank TymeBank reporting in January that it had hit 8.5 million customers, putting it above Nedbank.
Capitec has grabbed headlines over the years for its strong growth and sits comfortably as the largest retail bank in the country in terms of active retail customers.
At the end of its latest financial year, the group reported 22.2 million active customers – meaning over a third of South Africa’s population now banks with the group. This has since climbed to 23 million during the course of the year.
In stark contrast, Capitec also has the lowest number of employees of all the banks, though this will undoubtedly grow and new operations (particularly its Business Banking operations) expand.
Reflecting the massive scale of their respective businesses, Standard Bank and FirstRand have the most employees across their operations in South Africa.
| Bank | Employees (Group) | Employees (SA) | Customers (total SA) |
| Capitec | 15,747 | 15,747 | 22.2 million |
| Standard Bank | 54,176 | 30,697 | 11.4 million |
| FirstRand (FNB) | 49,250 | 39,157 | 9.87 million* |
| Absa | 37,107 | 27,085 | 9.84 million |
| Nedbank | 25,477 | **~23,500 | 7.3 million |
Loading ...
