South African Banks "What's up in credit and funding?" Potgieter

Research evidence excerpt

South African Banks "What's up in credit and funding?" Potgieter

Global Research

28 May 2026ab

South African Banks Equities

South AfricaWhat's up in credit and funding?

Banks

Stephan Potgieter, CFA

This is our analysis of the monthly balance sheet data of the SA banks Analyst

We analyse SA Reserve Bank data collected from South African banking entities (so- stephan.potgieter@ubs.com

called BA900s) published on a monthly basis with a two-month lag – this one for March +44-20-7568 8162

2026. A spreadsheet with the underlying data is available on request.

What stands out?

Retail credit growth reached mid-SDs (+5.1% yoy) for the first time since 2023, although

before the effects of higher inflation and rates due to the Middle East conflict, likely to

impact going forward.

Key industry trends

Retail credit (+5.1% yoy) remained underpinned by vehicle finance (+10.2% yoy),

although mortgages continued with a slow acceleration towards 4.0% yoy. Retail

unsecured personal loans remained subdued (+3.0% yoy). Core corporate (+ 8.8% yoy)

decelerated a bit (+0.8% mom), something to continue to watch, a key driver for the

banks. The large private sector corporate term loans category remained robust (+14.4%

yoy), although growth appears to have peaked. Retail deposit growth remains low

(+4.0% yoy), while competition for deposits continue to intensify as discussed below.

Bank-specific highlights

Among new entrants we continue to track deposits as a key indicator of success. We

notice Old Mutual Bank is starting to scale, now at R542m, while Bank Zero has also

showed up on the radar with R407m. Discovery Bank's strong growth continued

(+19.9% yoy) to R25.6bn, while TymeBank (+16.5% yoy) at R8bn and African Bank

(+16.4%) at R25.6bn are also reporting solid growth.