{"id":273523,"date":"2018-09-26T08:11:47","date_gmt":"2018-09-26T06:11:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=273523"},"modified":"2018-09-26T08:50:34","modified_gmt":"2018-09-26T06:50:34","slug":"capitec-sees-massive-boost-in-profit-as-it-hits-10-5-million-customers-in-sa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/banking\/273523\/capitec-sees-massive-boost-in-profit-as-it-hits-10-5-million-customers-in-sa\/","title":{"rendered":"Capitec sees massive boost in profit as it hits 10.5 million customers in SA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Capitec has published its financial results for the six months ending on 31 August 2018.<\/p>\n<p>The bank posted a 20% increase in headline earnings to R2.46 billion, alongside a 20% increase in headline earnings per share, to R21.28.<\/p>\n<p>Its net transaction fee income (non-lending) increased from R2.4 billion to R3.1 billion &#8211; and\u00a0now makes up almost half of its total net income, covering 90% of its operating expenses.<\/p>\n<p>Operating costs also increased from R3.2 billion to R3.5 billion on the back of a growth in staff, branches and investment in IT infrastructure costs.<\/p>\n<p>Total profit for the period hit R2.46 billion, up 20% from the R2.05 billion reported in the prior year.<\/p>\n<p>Notably, transaction growth increased by 25% and the bank indicated that it now has 10.5 million active clients &#8211; meaning that it is now likely <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/banking\/269891\/is-capitec-now-the-biggest-bank-in-south-africa\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">one of the biggest banks<\/a><\/strong> in the country by this metric.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Client-focused<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Capitec said that strong client growth was one of the key drivers of its performance.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We continuously improve efficiencies to ensure clients receive the best service and are able to be in control of their money. We attracted <strong>109,000 additional active clients every month<\/strong> for the last six months,&#8221; it said.<\/p>\n<p>It added that self-service banking transactions (including the banking app; internet banking; unstructured supplementary service data or USSD, which is mostly used by clients who do not have smart phones; in-branch self-service terminals and dual note recyclers) has increased in volume by 27% to 295 million at the end of August 2018 (August 2017: 231 million).<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;For the six month period ended August 2018, 146 million transactions had been performed via our banking app. The app was used by 1.8 million clients &#8211; an increase of 62% from August 2017,&#8221; it said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Continuous refinements to our credit strategy resulted in an improvement in the quality of the loan book. Arrears up to 3 months decreased by 10% and bad debts recovered increased by 14% for the 6 months since 1 March 2018.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Moving forward, Capitec said that it planned to expand its product offering to include business banking.<\/p>\n<p>It added that this may include the acquisition of Mercantile Bank Holdings Limited &#8211; for which it submitted a formal bid on 31 August 2018 and is currently awaiting the outcome.<\/p>\n<p>The directors declared a gross interim dividend of 630 cents per ordinary share (2017: 525 cents).<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/banking\/273475\/nigeria-to-review-standard-banks-2-6-billion-mtn-penalty\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Nigeria to \u201creview\u201d Standard Bank\u2019s $2.6 billion MTN penalty<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Capitec&#8217;s latest financial results show continued growth for the popular bank.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":151076,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961],"tags":[1798,26],"class_list":["post-273523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking","tag-capitec","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273523","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\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273523"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":273555,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273523\/revisions\/273555"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}