AFRICA– South African based commercial bank, Standard Banked has once again maintained its position as Africa’s Top Tier 1 Bank, latest ranking by The Banker Magazine have shown.
According to The Banker, Standard Bank has consistently been in the number one spot for the past 20 years, despite its Tier 1 not showing the spectacular rises that we see for many banks, especially Asian banks, during the period under review.
The report also revealed a continued dominance by the South African banking sector in the continent.
According to The Banker South Africa’s banking sector towers over the rest of the continent’s and is roughly equivalent to the other four countries added together.
This is despite the fact that Nigeria’s $495bn gross domestic product is about one-third larger than South Africa’s $370bn, according to the latest International Monetary Fund figures.
Other South African Banks in the top 10 were: First Rand in second place, Absa third, Nedbank fourth and Investec eighth.
The strongest Nigerian player was Zenith Bank in ninth place (415th in the 2019 Top 1000 ranking).
The Banker noted that in 2019, the continent’s banking industry accounted for less than 1% of global Tier 1 capital making it the smallest regional player, behind Latin America with , and the Middle East and way behind the giants of Asia, Europe and North America.
Nonetheless, The Banker notes that performance in capital terms of the top five African countries – South Africa, Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria and Kenya – is impressive, with South Africa, in particular, leading the way.
Of Africa’s top 5, Nigeria was the least performing, not recovering its pre-2009 high and now posting slightly less than $8bn of capital, ahead of Kenya’s almost $3bn, but some way behind Egypt’s $13bn and Morocco’s $11bn, and massively behind South Africa’s $34bn.
National Bank of Egypt was third in 2000, fell as low as eighth, but has since recovered to fifth; while the Moroccan banks – Groupe Banques Populaire and Attijariwafa – have mostly occupied the middle positions and now stand at sixth and seventh, respectively.
The Top 10 list of World’s Top 1000 Banks 2020, continued to be dominated by Chinese and American Banks.
Chinese Banks; ICBC, China Construction bank, Agricultural Bank of China, and Bank of China occupied by the first top four spots on the list.
JP Morgan Chase lead 3 other American Banks which occupied the 5th to 8th position, while the HSBC Holdings represented England in the 9th position and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group of Japan closed the Top 10 of the worlds top tier 1 banks.]
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