{"id":561548,"date":"2022-02-23T07:11:34","date_gmt":"2022-02-23T05:11:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=561548"},"modified":"2022-02-24T11:10:33","modified_gmt":"2022-02-24T09:10:33","slug":"banker-to-rich-south-africans-plans-to-more-than-double-its-client-base","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/banking\/561548\/banker-to-rich-south-africans-plans-to-more-than-double-its-client-base\/","title":{"rendered":"Banker to rich South Africans plans to more than double its client base"},"content":{"rendered":"

Investec Ltd, a bank that focuses on high net worth individuals in South Africa, is seeking to more than double its client base in the next three to four years, outpacing growth in a moribund economy.<\/p>\n

The lender is aiming to boost the number of private clients to 200,000 from 90,000, Investec Bank Ltd chief executive officer Richard Wainwright said in an interview. The firm plans to look beyond chartered accountants, its traditional target, to woo new customers.<\/p>\n

Investec, which is also listed and has operations in the UK, is focusing on accelerating growth after cutting costs, closing unprofitable offices from Australia to Ireland and spinning off its asset management business. That\u2019s helped its shares become the best performing bank stock – with a market value exceeding $1 billion – in Africa and the Middle East in the past year.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur strategy is driven by this total dedication to specialization, being niched and not being everything to everyone,\u201d group chief executive at Investec Fani Titi said during the same interview in Johannesburg Monday. \u201cYou operate in select markets and where we do, we have to be excellent because we are not the biggest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Investec says it will also focus on offering trade finance, working capital facilities and transactional banking to smaller companies. The challenge to Investec\u2019s growth will be South Africa\u2019s faltering economy and rising unemployment rates.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nThe African nation has the world\u2019s highest jobless rate among 82 countries and the eurozone monitored by Bloomberg. Its economy is forecast to expand 1.9% in 2022. That compares with 4.3% for the UK, 5.2% in China and 9.2% in India, underscoring why Investec expects the UK to be its growth engine.<\/p>\n

\u201cUK for us, overall, offers more growth opportunities, simply because the economy\u2019s bigger and it\u2019s growing faster,\u201d Wainwright said. \u201cSouth Africa has got its challenges at the macro level.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Investec executives will watch South African finance minister Enoch Godongwana\u2019s budget proposals on Wednesday to see if he will take concrete decisions that may spur an acceleration in the nation\u2019s economic growth.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need action, more than any new policy,\u201d Titi said.<\/p>\n

\n

Read: Citigroup targets commercial banking services in South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Investec Ltd, a bank that focuses on high net worth individuals in South Africa, is seeking to more than double its client base in the next three to four years, outpacing growth in a moribund economy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":492431,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961],"tags":[26,1498],"class_list":["post-561548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking","tag-headline","tag-investec"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561548","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\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=561548"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":562330,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561548\/revisions\/562330"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}