Fiscally fragile South Africa has hardly been the perfect nursery for growing ventures that redefine — and even disrupt — staid business sectors.
Capitec Bank can take a bow. Last week the bank that captured great swathes of unbanked South Africans stood shoulder to shoulder with the mighty FirstRand and Standard Bank in terms of market value.
It’s difficult to believe Capitec is hardly 23 years old, having first been noticed — in its previous guise as Keynes Rational — in the annual report of PSG Group as nothing more than an interesting aside.
When Michiel le Roux and his team listed Capitec on the JSE in 2002, the group carried a market value of between R57m and R215m. Initial investor sentiment was badly clouded by the crisis that hit small banks in 2002/2003, which caused such banks as Saambou and UniFer to founder.
In 2002 FirstRand — the owner of FNB and WesBank — and Standard Bank held market values of R56bn and just over R100bn respectively. Who could have foreseen that Capitec would grow into a fully fledged competitor to the biggest banks in South Africa — registering 200-times growth in market value over the next two decades and a bit?
The Capitec story is about delivering effectively and efficiently to a sprawling market that 25 years ago was deemed unviable or, at the very least, riddled with risk. A business in touch with the people …
It’s wishful thinking, but one might hope that a political party would learn from the Capitec story — offering service delivery that is both affordable and accessible to all South Africans.
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