Tough measures bear fruit
How Standard Bank clawed its way back
The bank recorded good half-year earnings despite the global trade slowdown and SA’s difficult environment
The past few years have been hard for Standard Bank, though it remains the largest bank in Africa. It has lagged its competitors in return on equity, and had a notoriously high overrun on the cost of its core banking IT project. It was forced to scale down its ambitions by retreating from operations in far-flung places such as Argentina and Russia, and sold 60% of its London operation to its largest shareholder, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China. The change of strategy, while at times humiliating, has paid off.Tshabalala says there are encouraging signs from recent market surveys that the customer service is improving. He argues that the reaction to customer demands is now much faster. The renewed focus on digitisation would have helped. The sheer scale of transactions, though similar to its competitors, is staggering: 3m clients did 775m digital transactions over the period. There were just 3m in-branch transactions over that time. Joint CEO Ben Kruger says the primary role of ...
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