Absa Group Profile
Absa Group Limited provides retail, business, corporate and investment, and wealth and investment management solutions.
The company owns majority stakes in banks in Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique, the Seychelles, South Africa (Absa Bank), Tanzania (Barclays Bank in Tanzania and National Bank of Commerce), Uganda and Zambia. It also has representative offices in Namibia and Nigeria, as well as insurance operations in Botswana, Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia. The company offers personal banking; business banking; private banking; stockbrokers and portfolio management; franchising; agribusiness; and wholesale and retail services.
Retail and Business Banking South Africa
Retail and Business Banking South Africa offers a suite of banking products and services to individual, enterprise and commercial customers. Customers are served through an branch and self-service terminal network, electronic and mobile channels, priority suites, relationship managers, as well as call center agents, dealerships, originators, alliances, and joint ventures.
Home Loans: The company offers residential property-related finance solutions direct to customers through personalized services, a range of electronic channels, and intermediaries such as estate agents and mortgage originators.
Vehicle and Asset Finance: The company offers a comprehensive range of funding solutions for assets, such as vehicles, aviation, marine, agricultural equipment, commercial, plant, and office equipment, as well as vehicle fleet and fleet card management. These solutions are provided to both individual and business customers through the branch network, approved dealerships, preferred suppliers and specialist sales force.
Card and Payments: The company offers credit cards and merchant acquiring solutions through a mix of Absa-branded and co-branded offerings, including British Airways, Avios and Virgin Money. Included in this portfolio are strategic partnerships with Edcon Store Card portfolio, which offers in-store cards and Woolworths Financial Services, which offers in-store cards, credit cards, personal loans and short-term insurance products.
Personal Loans: The company offers unsecured installment loans through face-to-face engagements, call center agents, as well as electronic and mobile channels.
Transactional and Deposits: The company offers a range of transactional banking, savings and investment products, rewards programme and services through various channels. These include the branch network, digital channels, ATMs, priority suites, call centers, as well as through a third-party retailer PEP (part of the PEPKOR Group).
Business Banking: The company offers debt, deposit and transactional products to enterprise and commercial customers. Customers within the enterprise segment, with an annual turnover of approximately R20m, are serviced using a direct coverage model with a predominately branch-based interface.
Corporate and Investment Banking (CIB) South Africa
CIB provides solutions to meet clients’ needs by delivering specialist investment banking, corporate banking, financing, risk management and advisory solutions.
Markets: Client Engagement integrates client coverage across Africa to provide holistic solutions to clients through relationship management and origination activities, leveraging the deep segment and sector specialization within CIB, across various business areas.
Banking: The company structures innovative solutions delivering to meet clients’ strategic advisory, financing and risk management requirements across industry sectors.
Commercial Property Finance: The company specializes in financing commercial, industrial, retail and residential development property (with a focus on affordable housing) across its African footprint as well as cross border financing in other jurisdictions.
Infrastructure Investments and private Equity: Infrastructure Investments acts as a principal by investing in equity to entities focused on infrastructure development in sub-Saharan Africa.
Corporate: The company provides corporate banking solutions spanning financing and transactional banking requirements, including trade and working capital solutions, as well as a full suite of cash management, payments and liquidity products and solutions. These services are provided across the company’s combined African institutional and corporate client base.
Rest of Africa Banking
Rest of Africa Banking operates in 11 jurisdictions across the African continent outside of South Africa through ten legal entities and two representative offices. Rest of Africa Banking offers a suite of banking products and services in three main market segments being Retail and Business Bank, CIB.
The company’s major segment areas include retail and business bank (RBB) rest of Africa; CIB rest of Africa; and head office, treasury and other operations in rest of Africa.
RBB Rest of Africa
RBB Rest of Africa offers a suite of retail and commercial products and services to individual and business customers on the African continent outside of South Africa. A range of solutions are provided to meet customers’ transactional, borrowing, savings, protection and payments needs. This is facilitated through branch and self-service channels, including Internet and mobile banking solutions.
The company’s Affluent and Commercial banking clients are serviced through its relationship model based on specific customer value propositions.
Premier Banking: Represents the affluent retail customer segment bespoke to each market. They are offered banking with tailor-made solutions through relationship managers and premier suites.
Prestige banking: Represents the emerging affluent retail customer segment serviced through banking teams, products and express service.
Personal banking: Represents the middle-market segment serviced through convenient banking solutions.
Small and Medium Enterprise banking: Represents business clients with an annual turnover of up to R50m. Servicing is through a direct coverage model, largely through the company’s branch network.
Commercial banking: Servicing is through a relationship-based model, where sales and service teams provide customized solutions. The primary industry sectors include agriculture, construction, manufacturing, transport and logistics, retail and franchising.
CIB Rest of Africa
CIB provides solutions to meet clients’ needs by delivering specialist investment banking, corporate banking, financing, risk management and advisory products and services.
Markets: The company engages in trading, sales and research activities across all major asset classes and products in Africa, delivering pricing, hedging and risk management capabilities to both corporate and institutional clients.
Banking: The company structures solutions to meet clients’ strategic advisory, financing and risk management requirements across various sectors.
Corporate: The company provides corporate banking solutions spanning financing and transactional banking requirements, trade and working capital, and a suite of cash management solutions, including payments and liquidity products. These services are provided across the company’s combined pan- African institutional and corporate client base, including public sector.
Strategy
The company’s strategy is to improve its market position through investments that continuously evolve and refine its customer value propositions by placing careful focus on both its current and prospective customers’ needs and growing expectations. Its strategy is anchored by an omni-channel approach with customers at the heart of its channel decisions across design, functionality and usage, with the aim of providing channel choice, security, access and convenience.
History
The company was formerly known as Barclays Africa Group Limited and changed its name to Absa Group Limited in May 2018.
