Limpopo Business 2019-20 edition

OVERVIEW
establishing a local life insurance company. These initiatives aim to make
banking more accessible for rural communities and to make finance more
readily available to small and micro-sized businesses. Trying to integrate
small business into the mainstream economy is a major goal of national
and provincial governments in South Africa.
VBS Mutual Bank, one of three mutual banks in South Africa, was
placed under curatorship in 2018. The appointed curator was not able
to confirm all deposits. In the lead-up to the bank not being able to
meet its commitments, municipalities had been making deposits to the
bank although these violated restrictions put in place by the National
Treasury. VBS began life as the Venda Building Society in 1982. The Public
Investment Corporation held 34% of equity.
To support entrepreneurial students, the University of Limpopo
has set up the Limpopo Student Seed Fund together with the SAB
Foundation. The signing ceremony for the fund is shown in the
photograph on the previous page. Support will be offered to businesses
that promise to find solutions to social problems such as unemployment
and hunger.
Ubank is owned by a trust that is managed by the Chamber of Mines
and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). It has about 100 branches
and a strong presence in Limpopo because of its focus on the mining
sector. Ubank has about half-a-million clients.
South Africa’s four big retail banks (Nedbank, Absa, Standard Bank
and First National Bank) have a solid presence in the major towns in the
province. Agriculture is an important focus area for banks and so they
have established specialised units such as Nedbank Agribusiness. Focus
areas for this unit are agronomy (grain, oil seeds, sugar and cotton),
livestock (including game farming), horticulture (fruit and vegetables, for
example), and secondary agriculture which covers agricultural processing
and storage.
The two most active agricultural companies in Limpopo are both
registered financial service providers. NTK, a subsidiary of the Free
State-based VKB, has access to lending for farmers and insurance
products. Afgri offers the same services under the brand Unigro, and
it has another service called Gro Capital Financial Services which offers
ONLINE RESOURCES
National Credit Regulator: www.ncr.org.za
Office of the Auditor-General of South Africa: www.agsa.co.za
Post Bank: www.postbank.co.za
South African Institute for Chartered Accountants:
www.saica.co.za
more sophisticated products such
as trade finance, foreign exchange
and currency, and interest rate
hedging.
Banks are actively working to
sign up more of the unbanked
population. Nedbank has Approveit,
which allows customers
to accept or reject an Internet
transaction by cellphone. Nedbank
also has partnerships with shops
such as Boxer Stores and Pick n Pay
where customers can have access
to financial services in previously
unserviced areas.
Some of Nedbank’s other
innovations include Home
Loans Online Digital Channel
and Market Edge, together with
the Nedbank App Suite. The
Keyona Plus account includes
funeral cover, a loan facility and a
method of transferring money. The
Nedbank4me account is tailored to
the youth market.
The insurance market has
adapted to specific market
segments, including middleincome
earners. A typical example
of a new product is Old Mutual’s
iWYZE medical gap cover,
designed to pay the difference
between what a medical aid
scheme is willing to pay and the
fee of the hospital or doctor.
Relative newcomer, Capitec,
is rapidly moving towards
being part of a Big Five and it
announced in 2018 that it would
partner with Centriq Life to enter
the insurance market. Capitec
has no fewer than 69 branches
and ATMs outlets in Limpopo,
suggesting that its low-cost
banking model is popular.
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