African Bank Seeks To Help South Africans In Attaining Financial Freedom. African Bank Limited is a retail bank in South Africa that offers financial products and services. The Bank is licensed as a “locally controlled bank” by the South African Reserve Bank (SARB). Headquartered in Midrand, South Africa, the bank has a countrywide branch distribution network in addition to a full digital channel offering; as well as sales, collections and customer service contact centres.
With African Bank, clients can save, insure and borrow as the company understands the importance of financial freedom. It is committed to helping clients’ kick-start positive change in their life by bringing them a range of financial products that offer assistance, security, and comfort. The bank is committed to making a difference to the clients and aims to provide value, more than what its customers expect. It promises to live its purpose, ‘humanity through banking’ in all that it does. Its core values of transparency, creativity, collaboration, empathy and sustainability guide its 3 500 African Bankers across 389 branches and four contact centres in their daily efforts to make it easier and more rewarding for consumers to manage their financial journey. African Bank is dedicated to creating relevant products that help to uplift South Africans, including loans, investment and insurance products.
As of 2019, African Bank Limited had total assets worth R28.881 billion, with shareholders’ equity of R10.659 billion. At that time the bank, its subsidiaries and affiliates employed around 3,886 people.
The original African Bank Limited was placed under curatorship by the South African Reserve Bank, under the terms of the South African Banks Act, Act 94 of 1990. The SARB announced a restructuring proposal, which received support from a consortium of six South African banks and the Public Investment Corporation. A new banking group, African Bank Holdings Limited was created to assume the viable assets and some of the liabilities of the old bank.
The legacy bank and the compromised part of the business was renamed Residual Debt Services Limited (RDS). RDS surrendered its banking license in 2014. In 2016, the new African Bank Limited opened its doors as the new entity, with the required licenses and registrations required by the various regulators in place.
