While mobile operators are wading into the financial services game, FNB has quietly gone about building a sizeable telecommunications business. The bank had amassed "well over 600,000 subscribers" within FNB Connect, the telecommunications unit that was launched in mid-2015, said Shadrack Palmer, chief commercial officer at the division. "We had 600,000 subscribers at the end of December and we’ve added a significant number of subscribers in January and February, coming off the campaign we ran in November, December and January where we gave a lot of data to customers to get them to pick up our SIM," Palmer said. That implies that FNB Connect’s market share in the mobile communications segment is closing in on 1%, since there are about 90-million active mobile subscribers in SA. While the unit pales compared with the likes of Vodacom, which has 40-million customers in SA, its subscriber base has grown fast. FNB Connect, linked to the bank’s eBucks rewards programme, offers voice and ...
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