{"id":25527,"date":"2012-10-31T11:10:59","date_gmt":"2012-10-31T09:10:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=25527"},"modified":"2012-10-31T13:39:07","modified_gmt":"2012-10-31T11:39:07","slug":"south-africas-banking-population-revealed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/banking\/25527\/south-africas-banking-population-revealed\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa’s banked population revealed"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Africa\u2019s banked population has grown by 1.3 million in 2012\u201a according to FinMark Trust<\/a>\u2019s FinScope South Africa survey.<\/p>\n

Altogether\u201a there are now 22.5 million banked adults in South Africa\u201a or 67% out of a total 16+ population of 33.7 million (Stats SA 2011 mid-year population estimate).<\/p>\n

This means there are now almost 10 million more adults in the banking system than in 2004\u201a when 13 million adults\u201a or 46% of the population\u201a were banked.<\/p>\n

The key banking development in 2012\u201a the survey found\u201a is the roll-out of the new South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) MasterCard.<\/p>\n

Three in four (75%) social grant holders or 7.4 million are now banked \u2013 up from 60% or 5 million in 2011. More women (69%) than men (64%) are now banked \u2013 and there is further room for growth\u201a with 7%\u201a or 2.4 million\u201a of the adult population in South Africa being unbanked social grant holders\u201a the survey showed.<\/p>\n

Nine out of ten (88%) banked adults claim to withdraw money from an ATM at least once a month, and 25% claim to get cash at a store till using a bank card. Only 13% claim to use cellphone banking.<\/p>\n

The big challenge is to get people\u201a including banked people\u201a to meaningfully engage financially by transacting frequently rather than withdrawing all their money at once, the survey said.<\/p>\n

A third (34%) of the banked\u201a or 7.3 million people\u201a agree with the statement \u201cas soon as money is deposited into your account\u201a you take all of it out\u201d. There are 9.8 million people in South Africa who have basic transactional bank accounts and no other kind of formal financial product.<\/p>\n

Retirement<\/strong><\/p>\n

Other findings of the survey revealed that, despite coming from a low base\u201a there has been impressive growth since 2004 in the penetration of pension funds (9% to 12%)\u201a provident funds (6% to 10%) and retirement annuities (6% to 9%).<\/p>\n

Membership of informal savings or investment groups and stokvels<\/em> has also grown from 7% in 2004 to 11% in 2012.<\/p>\n

Long-term savings is still a challenge for the majority of South Africans though. The survey reveals that half (48%) of South African adults are worried that they won\u2019t have enough money for old age or retirement and 83% do not have any formal retirement product. Only 25% of adults claim to have enough money to save after covering all their spending needs.<\/p>\n

There is scope for far greater take-up of formal retirement products: whereas 52% of wage or salary workers personally earning R2\u201a000 or more per month have some form of formal retirement product\u201a only 16% of non-salary earners in the same income bracket do.<\/p>\n

The survey also found that, since 2004\u201a personal life insurance has increased from 11% to 13%. Furthermore\u201a an additional 3% of South African adults claim to be covered by life insurance in someone else\u2019s name.<\/p>\n

Cause for concern<\/strong><\/p>\n

But Finmark said that, despite the impressive progress made since 2004 on financial inclusion\u201a there are still areas that create cause for concern. It pointed out that only 29% of South African adults are engaged in full-time employment.<\/p>\n

This places limits on the roll-out of many financial products. Furthermore\u201a one in five (21%)\u201a or 7.2 million adults\u201a fall into LSM 1-4. Sixty-two percent of this group live in regions that Statistics South Africa classifies as Tribal Land\u201a 40% do not have electricity and only 21% earn a salary or wage.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe challenge in engaging this group is apparent when we consider that the average time for a South African adult to get to a supermarket\u201a ATM or post office is 23 minutes\u201a but this doubles to 46 minutes amongst those in LSM 1-4\u201a\u201d FinMark said.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking forward\u201a if we are to make financial markets work for the poor\u201a we should expect a greater role for relevant touchpoints such as stokvels\u201a burial societies\u201a churches\u201a post office branches and retail channels to reach people better.”<\/p>\n

“The successful roll-out of such a strategy will require education of those people in the frontline \u2013 retail managers and cashiers\u201a custodians and members of informal groups \u2013 in order to extend appropriate products and mechanisms to end-consumers.”<\/p>\n

“As we enter the second decade of FinScope studies\u201a the challenge will be to deepen financial engagement further in order to better meet the full set of needs of our people\u201a\u201d FinMark added.<\/p>\n

Related articles<\/strong><\/p>\n

Standard Bank skips along beaten digital path<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

FNB named most innovative bank in the world<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

FNB online banking surges 27%<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

FNB \u201cdabbling\u201d in NFC: CEO<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africa’s banked population has grown by 1.3 million in 2012\u201a FinMark Trust’s FinScope South Africa survey shows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":22444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[961],"tags":[4504,4505,26,1534,1365,1809],"class_list":["post-25527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking","tag-finmark-trust","tag-finscope-south-africa","tag-headline","tag-mastercard","tag-south-african-social-security-agency","tag-stats-sa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25527"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25533,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25527\/revisions\/25533"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}