Capitec is hiring – with these skills in top demand

Capitec has recently hired 700 staff members, with the group’s interest in IT skills and bank branch employees bucking the overall trend.

For the six months ended 31 August 2024, Capitec’s headline earnings increased by 36% to R6.4 billion.

The group also saw a decrease in bad debts, with its credit impairments decreasing by 22% (R1.0 billion) over 1H25 when excluding AvaFin.

The group’s annualised credit loss ratio (excluding AvaFin) was also reduced from 9.6% to 7.0%. (including AvaFin: 7.6%).

Capitec said that the decrease in credit impairments was partly due to the tightening of credit granting criteria during the 2023 and 2024 financial years, which led to a decrease in loan disbursements.

The strength of Capitec’s results has been reflected in its share price, which increased by 83% over the last year and was the best-performing share on the JSE for the year ended 30 June 2024.

Speaking at the group’s results, CEO Gerrie Fourie said the company hired 700 new staff members, bringing its total staff count to 16,200.

Fourie noted that the majority of these hires work in IT and data.

When asked by BusinessTech what skills the company is looking to get, Fourie said that IT professionals are always in demand.

This can be seen in Capitec’s career portal, with the 18 IT roles, the most of any department at the company:

• IT – 18 Roles
• Marketing and Communications – 10 Roles
• Operations and national sales – 10 Roles
• Graduate & Bursaries – 10 Roles
• Risk Management – 3 Roles
• Business Development – 5 Roles
• Credit Management – 3 Roles
• Financial Management – 2 Roles
• Business Support – 1 Role
• Human Resources – 1 Role

Fourie also said that the group plans to open another ten branches shortly, which should create a combined 150 jobs.

Going against the trend

Capitec’s hiring prospects differ somewhat from other data points across the country.

The latest Pnet report shows a significant decline in hiring activity for IT roles over the last few years.

The sector has seen a decline of 31% over the year ended August 2024.

Over two years, recruitment activity in this sector has decreased by 33%

That said, after hiring activity for IT professionals dropped substantially in Q1 2024, there has been an improvement in recruitment activity, and demand has slightly increased.

“The decrease in local demand for IT professionals has been fuelled by the global trend of tech layoffs. Retrenchments and job cuts by global giants in the IT sector were first announced at the end of 2022,” said Pnet.

“Companies like Google, Amazon and Meta (Facebook) reduced their Tech staff counts significantly back then.

“This trend has continued and is still very prevalent in 2024. Google and Amazon are still on the list when it comes to tech layoffs, but other companies like Tesla, TikTok, Microsoft and other companies are also decreasing their Tech staff size in 2024.”

Capitec’s push to open more branches is not surprising; the group opened 26 branches between 2018 and 2023.

This does, however, go against the overall trend when it comes to bank branches. The five biggest banks cut their overall number of branches across the country by 26, and Nedbank closed 57 branches over the period.

The breakdown of the branch closures and openings can be found below:

Read: New university lined up for South Africa’s richest area