As one of the country’s biggest banks, FNB said it saw a significant increase in people using its digital portals, with logins exceeding 878 million and the FNB app itself contributing 603 logins. EWallet customers were up 6% to 6.36 million.<\/p>\n
The FNB App’s active transactional users surpassed 5 million, setting a new monthly record of 103 million logins in October 2022, it said.<\/p>\n
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“We’re seeing a growing number of customers taking up our digitally displayed offers, with 6.5 million pro-active pre-approved offers taken up in just six months, an increase of 21%.”<\/p>\n
“The appetite for digital payments continues to rise, with customers making 41.9 million smart device payments with 3.9 million virtual cards and R15 billion in payments,” said FNB.<\/p>\n
In terms of its retail business, the bank paid out R8 billion to first-time property buyers and R40 million in student loans.<\/p>\n
The company’s wealth and investments also increased substantially, with the number of premium accounts increasing to 604,000 (up 3%) and a total of R71.5 billion in assets being managed.<\/p>\n
Regarding telecommunications, FNB Connect increased the number of active sims to 879,000, up 4%.<\/p>\n
The bank reported that its commercial segment’s half-year performance was bolstered by growth in both customers (up 5%) and deposits (up 15%).<\/p>\n
FirstRand results<\/strong><\/p>\n FNB represents the retail and commercial operations of the FirstRand Group.<\/p>\n For the interim period to December 2022, the FirstRand Group reported a 15% jump in normalised earnings to R18 billion, and net asset value up 2% to R166.4 billion.<\/p>\n The group declared an interim dividend of 189 cents per share.<\/p>\n FirstRand said that its growth was driven by a solid underlying operational performance and by continued momentum in new business origination in all of its large lending portfolios.<\/p>\n As reflected in the FNB results this also included excellent growth in deposits and a particularly strong showing by the group\u2019s transactional franchise – measured by customer growth and volumes.<\/p>\n “This strong earnings print, supported by capital optimisation, resulted in a normalised return on equity of 21.8%, which is at the top end of the target range of 18% to 22%. In addition, the group produced R6.2 billion of economic profit, FirstRand\u2019s key measure for shareholder value creation, which is now above pre-pandemic levels,” it said.<\/p>\n In its lending business, the group said that it was still targeting low-risk clients, however.<\/p>\n “Retail lending in secured products, such as residential mortgages and vehicle and asset finance, continues to be focused on low- to medium-risk customers. This mix of advances growth has resulted in some margin compression, but the group believes it continues to capture a higher share of low- and medium-risk business whilst satisfying the needs of customers.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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