Discovery has published its financial results for the six months ending December 2019, outlining the success of its new banking operation.<\/p>\n
Discovery Bank soft-launched in March 2019 and as at 18 February 2020 had 78,000 clients with 180,000 accounts – nearly half of which had never held a Discovery Card before, it said.<\/p>\n
The bank said that deposits had grown ‘strongly’ to R1.2 billion, while total credit card spend was R2.6 billion and total credit limits granted was R2.5 billion \u2013 with over R1 billion in credit facility used.<\/p>\n
“Early member engagement is positive and the client base is exhibiting appealing spend, credit, arrears and deposit behaviour, better than the performance of the previous Discovery Card and considerably better than the market,” Discovery said.<\/p>\n
“Growth potential is strong with over 200,000 accounts that still need to be migrated<\/strong> from the FNB Joint Venture and the activation of Discovery\u2019s advisor channels to sell bank accounts in the second half of the year.”<\/p>\n Discovery said that early indications are encouraging that the Vitality shared-value model is working in banking \u2013 where interest rates and incentives are tiered by financial behaviour and wellness as measured through Vitality Money.<\/p>\n “Strong correlations are being observed by Vitality Money status in credit utilisation, deposits, spending and defaults \u2013 across the client base and account types,” it said.<\/p>\n “Engagement and correlations are even stronger for clients with multiple Vitality product.”<\/p>\n The group said that the Discovery Bank build, testing and running have been achieved within budget while delivering a number of innovations including onboarding in less than five minutes, health banking and Discovery Miles.<\/p>\n Discovery said that its priorities now\u00a0include simplifying the Vitality Money user experience and streamlining the service environment and online support functionality.<\/p>\n
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