ANDILE KHUMALO: New banks aren't innovative enough to shake up the Big Four
The retail banking industry is one of the most susceptible to disruption. Most of the innovation we have seen in recent times has been around technology. Last year, FNB was named Most Innovative African Bank at the 2017 African FinTech Awards, for the second year in a row. The man widely credited with getting it to this innovative status, former CEO Michael Jordaan, has himself established a challenger in Bank Zero, whose value proposition seems to be, once again, technology. Then there is entrepreneur Patrice Motsepe and his TymeBank. Again, the proposition is banking through an app, and via retailers - neither of which is new to the market. I remain sceptical about these two new entrants for several reasons, the biggest of which is the over-reliance on technology as a differentiator, and the fact that they have no customer base to leverage. The Big Four banks take a lot of criticism for being archaic and slow in innovation. But the truth is that virtually all of them are providing...
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