Capitec Bank Holdings overtook FirstRand to become Africa\u2019s most valuable bank, a month after it appointed a new chief executive officer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
South Africa\u2019s biggest bank by customer numbers, Capitec has reported record profits for four straight years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Its shares have jumped about 16% since the start of the year, outstripping peers on the FTSE\/JSE Africa Bank Index, which climbed 3.6% over the period. FirstRand is down 1.3%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Capitec\u2019s stock has surged 213,189% since its listing on 18 February, 2002. Under former CEO Gerrie Fourie, the bank\u2019s focus on low-income depositors and unsecured lending helped lure customers. Graham Lee replaced Fourie on 19 July.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCapitec\u2019s growth shows what a company can do by solving a real customer problem, with a decisive management team and agile technology,\u201d Avior Capital Markets analyst Adrienne Damant said in response to questions from Bloomberg. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It has created a trusted brand and leveraged its large client base to consistently deliver better earnings growth and returns than its peers, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still, Capitec is facing intensifying competition as rivals including Nedbank Group Ltd. and new lender OM Bank seek to tap the low-income market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Capitec was founded by Michiel le Roux in 1997, three years after Nelson Mandela led the African National Congress to victory in the nation\u2019s first post-apartheid elections. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The lender was spun off from financial services company PSG Group Ltd. in March 2001 and listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange 11 months later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since then, the company has transformed itself into a financial-services company with more than 24.1 million personal and business clients as of the end of February. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Capitec Bank Holdings overtook FirstRand to become Africa\u2019s most valuable bank, a month after it appointed a new chief executive officer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":834870,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961],"tags":[2002,853],"class_list":["post-836114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking","tag-capitec-bank","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836114","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=836114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":836117,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836114\/revisions\/836117"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/834870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=836114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=836114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=836114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Bank<\/th> Total Assets<\/th><\/tr> Standard Bank<\/td> R3.4 trillion <\/td><\/tr> FirstRand<\/td> R2.5 trillion <\/td><\/tr> Absa Group<\/td> R2.2 trillion<\/td><\/tr> Nedbank<\/td> R1.5 trillion <\/td><\/tr> Capitec<\/td> R239 billion <\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n