One of South Africa\u2019s newest banks is planning to almost double the number of customers and boost its lending book as it seeks to lift profit to R3 billion by 2029.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The group now has plans to roll out AI tools to boost private investment and is also looking to integrate services into WhatsApp as innovative drivers towards that goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Six-year-old Discovery Bank, a unit of insurer Discovery, broke even in the second half of its fiscal year that ended June 30, a year earlier than expected. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the full year, the lender shrank its loss to 68 million rand and plans to leverage its existing 1.2 million clients and the 1,000 new customers it nets daily to power earnings over the next four years.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the fastest-growing bank in South Africa today,\u201d Discovery Bank Chief Executive Officer Hylton Kallner said in an interview, adding that the company is working toward having 2 million clients by 2029. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The lender unveiled a raft of new products this year including revolving credit facilities and grew its personal and home-loan businesses, which boosted loans by 39% in the year to June. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kallner is targeting a further increase in lending and plans to raise the ratio of loans to deposits to as much as 70% by 2029 from about 39%.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOur advances are less than half of our deposits, which gives us a lot of runway to grow the advances book within our current funding plan,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe do expect to see advances continuing to outpace deposits in the short to medium term.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The lender plans to roll out a new artificial-intelligence tool that will boost its private-banking capability and incorporate the ability to access services through channels like Meta\u2019s messaging tool WhatsApp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe market is competitive and to continue at this pace, we are going to have to continue innovating,\u201d Kallner said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the only way that we can see growth continuing on that trajectory.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of South Africa\u2019s newest banks is planning to almost double the number of customers and boost its lending book as it seeks to lift profit to R3 billion by 2029.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":646263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961],"tags":[12923,2118],"class_list":["post-838202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking","tag-discovery-bank","tag-whatsapp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838202","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=838202"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":838203,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838202\/revisions\/838203"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=838202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=838202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=838202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}