Jacques Celliers - Afrikan Heroes

FNB Named the Strongest Banking Brand in the World

February 7, 2023

It appears the rebranding efforts by the management of First National Bank (FNB) is yielding the desired fruits as the financial powerhouse has been named the strongest banking brand in the world.
This is coming months after its major brand refresh, new digital interfaces and a new approach to integrated advice, First National Bank (FNB) has been named the Strongest Banking Brand in the World in the Brand Finance Banking 500 2023 report. FNB emerged as the leader among the world’s 500 largest banks, with an impressive Brand Strength Index score of 93 (out of 100), a AAA+ rating, and a brand value of $1,540 billion.

The Strongest Banking Brand acknowledgement is determined through an independent brand valuation where scores for independent measures are informed by brand investment (including products, service and innovation), brand equity (functional and emotional drivers), and financial performance data (incl. current revenue, price premium). In the 2023 rankings FNB improved across several metrics including positive brand sentiment and various financial performance measures (incl. improved forecasted growth rates). Additionally, a strong banking brand should be able to adapt to changing market conditions and consumer preferences. This is certainly true for FNB, which has been at the forefront of introducing new technologies and platforms that make financial and lifestyle services more convenient and accessible for customers. It was the first bank in Africa to introduce a mobile banking app and online banking, allowing customers to manage their money from anywhere at any time.

FNB CEO, Jacques Celliers says, one of the key reasons for their continued success is their commitment to platform innovation and advice-led financial services. “Our advice-led approach to financial services offers customers the full benefits of personalised help across our range of solutions. This helps customers make more informed decisions about their finances, such as identifying potential financial risks and opportunities. Overall, our aim is to help customers achieve their goals and aspirations by improving their financial well-being. Our success over the 185 years of our brand’s existence is also due to the high levels of trust and loyalty shown by our customers, and this is something we deeply cherish.”

FNB Chief Marketing Officer, Faye Mfikwe, adds that “our recent efforts to refresh our iconic brand, interfaces and value propositions was not only designed to help customers with their needs, but to equally broaden our brand’s appeal and transcend geographical limitations. This accolade gives us impetus to continue making a difference in the lives of our customers and the communities we serve. Furthermore, we believe that a one-of-a-kind global recognition such as this one can be instrumental in inspiring hope to people on our continent about the limitless possibilities when we all strive to be #changeables at heart.”

FNB’s commitment to partner in building sustainable communities has also contributed to its strong brand. The bank has implemented various initiatives to support sustainable development, with an emphasis on environmental and social responsibility. Over the years, FNB has increased its efforts to broaden financial inclusion across the African continent, investing in local markets to open purpose-built branches and other points of presence. Similarly, there have been strong partnerships with local businesses through agile business models that enable communities and the bank to derive shared value.

Jeremy Sampson from Brand Finance says, “we’re pleased to once again see that brands on the African continent continue to make their presence felt across the world. Our survey comes at a crucial time when brands are facing global uncertainty, and our models can, to a degree, become a yardstick for brands that are focused on building a sustainable future and businesses. The Strongest Brand accolade is highly contested, which means any brand that emerges at the top can be proud of its efforts.”

FNB is no stranger to global acclaim after its eBucks Rewards programme was ranked first in the world for its use of technology 2022, while at the global MVNO Awards, FNB Connect was named Digital MVNO of the Year in the same year. Some years back, FNB was also recognised as the Most Innovative Bank in the World.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

FNB Delivers Strong Results With Good Credit and Deposit Performance

September 19, 2022

By Jacques Celliers

FNB delivered a strong set of financial results for the financial year ending 30 June 2022, as 10.96 million customers continued to place their trust in our ability to help them with their financial, business and lifestyle needs. Our performance was driven by more customers, increased transactional volumes, strong deposit growth, lower impairments, and increased disbursements to our retail and commercial customers.

Some of the key financial highlights are:

Active customers increased by 5% from 10.48 million to 10.96 million;

Profit before tax increased by 23% from R23.2-billion to R28.4-billion;

Deposits increased by 13% from R666.8-billion to R755.5-billion;

Advances increased by 7% from R459.9-billion to R490.8-billion;

Overall transaction volumes increased by 14% from 2.8 billion to 3.2 billion;

Digitally active customers increased from 6.09 million to 6.48 million; and

Digital logins totalled 1.6 billion.

We want to thank our customers for embracing our strategy and allowing us to help them with their money management and financial wellbeing. As the largest retail household deposit franchise, we are encouraged by our customers’ trust in our ability to meet their expectations. This is also evidenced by the robust growth of our transactional, lending and deposit activity, as well as the increasing demand for our insurance and investment solutions. Pleasingly, we have the necessary resources, including lending capacity, to support our customers’ growth and financial needs.

We remain committed to investing in our digital platform to facilitate our customers’ migration to safer and more efficient channels. Our platform evolution and strategy to increase customer adoption of digital interfaces is yielding results as we continue to experience significant volume and activity growth. Our efforts to protect our customers from fraud continue to be an integral part of our platform innovations, and we are pleased to report positive outcomes in this regard. Our scalable platform offers customers the opportunity to manage their financial needs, securely, 24/7 and ensures customers can engage with us on their preferred device interface, either unassisted on their own devices or assisted by us in our branches, call centres, service suites or secure chat.

We have the necessary resources, including lending capacity, to support our customers’ growth and financial needs

Our Retail segment made significant progress in its strategy to offer inclusive and personalised financial services to customers and their families. We strive to assist customers in managing their money better. Our efforts are supported by unassisted money management tools like nav» Money on the FNB App, which is now used by over 2.9 million customers. To assist Retail customers with their credit needs, in the past year we disbursed a total of R52-billion in home loans. We also disbursed R23-billion in personal loans to customers to appropriately facilitate their day-to-day cashflow needs.

In addition to our popular eWallet solution, we also offer Easy Zero and Easy Pay As You Use accounts. Easy Zero is an entry-level transactional bank account with no monthly account fee and it can be opened through cellphone banking with only the individual’s name, surname, and ID number. Easy Pay-As-You-Use has a low monthly account fee of R4.95 that has remained unchanged. These low-cost accounts play an important role in broadening financial inclusion for customers, including those with irregular income.

Commercial segment

Our Commercial segment also delivered strong results, with just under 300 000 new business accounts and strong deposit growth off the back of attractive product pricing and good innovation. We also offer our commercial customers money management support which helped them to better manage their cashflows. Commercial advances have also increased year-on-year, with total disbursements up 35%, as we continue to support and offer innovative solutions to our business customers’ lending needs. In addition, our SME customers benefited from reduced and/or zero-rated fees to assist them in starting, running and growing their businesses.

In Public Sector Banking, we continued to assist clients such as government departments, schools and universities in digitising their services. We increased digital penetration among our public sector clients from less than 50% to more than 85% to date.

Pleasingly, our Broader Africa activities also delivered strong value to our customers with good deposit and transactional activity growth. Disciplined credit and cost management also contributed to their profit growth. The portfolio’s overall performance was largely attributable to resilient results in countries such as Botswana, Namibia, Eswatini and Zambia, and a continued rebound in Mozambique. First National Bank Ghana continued to mature its operations in line with our strategy. Our Broader Africa countries are levering both traditional and alternative distribution channels to deliver more efficient and cost-effective financial solutions to customers.

Social impact

Our efforts to support broader society include financial inclusion and wellness, community support for social and economic transformation, and environmental sustainability. We were actively involved in efforts to provide relief to flood-affected communities such as KwaZulu-Natal, as well as in providing work experience to youth through an internal FirstJob programme with 468 FirstJobbers employed, up 53% this year and resulting in a total of 2 848 youth gaining invaluable work experience to date. Furthermore, we continue to use our platform for social good by allowing customers and employees to donate to charities and adopt early childhood centres via the FNB App’s nav>> Care functionality.

Some of FNB’s “Help” to society included:

R181-million donated to FirstRand’s Corporate Foundations;

R261-million invested since 2018 to help 2 848 youth with work experience through the FirstJob programme;

Over R37-million donated to communities affected by disasters;

8-million to repair infrastructure and provide sanitation in 45 vandalised KZN schools;

R10 million sponsorship for the Thrive by Five Index, the largest survey of early learning outcomes in South Africa;

Over R3.4-million raised through nav» Care donations by employees and customers; and

Some 1 165 early childhood centres and Old Age Homes adopted digitally by employees and customers.

We recognise that the societal impact of our business efforts is critical to establishing trust. As a result, we strive to make a positive impact by collaborating with communities across our markets. We also recognise that our business performance would not have been possible without our customers and hardworking employees, and we extend our gratitude to all as we work to build an even stronger business over the next 184 years.

Jacques Celliers, is CEO of FNB

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

FNB Rewards Employees With R-10 Million Innovation Awards

August 1, 2022

One of South Africa’s leading financial powerhouse, FNB has continued to recognise and reward its employees for pioneering innovations. The longstanding, 20-year-old Innovators Programme showcases and celebrates platform innovations by employees, with recent innovators’ cycles having seen employees being awarded with close to R10 million in prize money for their innovative submissions.

“Our internal Innovators Programme acts as a platform to help steer, drive and celebrate relevant innovation across our organisations,” says FNB CEO Jacques Celliers. “Our ability to innovate in-house continues to serve as an important advantage in our efforts to deliver timely and contextual solutions to our retail and commercial customers. Considering the economic and social challenges facing individuals and businesses, we are motivated to innovate and scale our contextual solutions even further as innovation remains a vital enabler for our and our customers’ growth.”

Our internal Innovators Programme acts as a platform to help steer, drive and celebrate relevant innovation

FNB Innovators executive Nenzeni Duma says: “We congratulate this year’s top prize-winning team, all other winners and finalists. Through the programme, we have developed exciting offerings, adapted to our new hybrid ways of working, for our employees to be inspired, ideate collaboratively, and implement and celebrate innovations. We are excited to see how these impactful platform solutions will continue to solve local and global challenges that our customers and the society at large are grappling with.”

For this cycle, the top prize winner was Activity Based Payments, which gives customers control of when and how to make payments on dates they set while managing their money.

Other game-changing innovations included “Virtual Card”, which has reimagined physical card on platform and allows FNB customers to safely pay for purchases online with its dynamic CVV that changes every hour.

Employees who created a solution called “Democratising Investments — Social Wealth Creation” were recognised for the creation of FNB’s ETN Enables Shares Zero, which allows clients to trade FNB ETNs for free without any monthly fees on platform.

A “Mass Affluent Regional Model” solution, meanwhile, delivers integrated financial services to all mass affluent customers across all platforms, through contextual money management conversations and also recognised.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry