{"id":14484,"date":"2012-09-11T16:11:55","date_gmt":"2012-09-11T14:11:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/09\/update-2-s-africas-firstrand-push-for-customers-pays-off\/"},"modified":"2012-09-11T16:11:55","modified_gmt":"2012-09-11T14:11:55","slug":"update-2-s-africas-firstrand-push-for-customers-pays-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/update-2-s-africas-firstrand-push-for-customers-pays-off\/","title":{"rendered":"UPDATE 2-S.Africa&#8217;s FirstRand push for customers pays off"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>* FY Headline EPS 226.9 cents vs 179.4 cents<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>* Net interest income R21.9 bln vs R17.4 bln<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>* Shares up 31 pct this year<\/p>\n<p> (Adds CEO and analyst quotes, details)<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>By Helen Nyambura-Mwaura<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>JOHANNESBURG, Sept 11 (Reuters) &#8211; FirstRand&#8217;s push<br \/>\nto sell high interest loans to lower income customers fuelled a<br \/>\n26 percent rise in annual profit, although South Africa&#8217;s No.2<br \/>\nbank said it was setting aside more money to cover bad loans as<br \/>\nthe economy deteriorates.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>South African banks &#8211; dominated by heavyweights Standard<br \/>\nBank, FirstRand, Absa Group and Nedbank<br \/>\n &#8211; are ramping up high margin loans to offset weak<br \/>\ndemand for credit elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They are gaining market share from their peers, that is<br \/>\npretty positive, their retail business is doing phenomenally<br \/>\nwell,&#8221; said Faizal Moolla, an analyst at Avior Research, who has<br \/>\nan &#8220;outperform&#8221; rating on FirstRand.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They have been growing their unsecured lending pretty<br \/>\naggressively and that would have contributed to the increase in<br \/>\nthe impairment ratio, but overall a very good performance.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>South Africa&#8217;s second-largest bank has been courting retail<br \/>\ncustomers from rivals through an aggressive media campaign. It<br \/>\nadded 1.3 million new accounts in the year to end-June.<br \/>\n\u00a0 <span class=\"label\"><strong>Continued&#8230;<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>* FY Headline EPS 226.9 cents vs 179.4 cents * Net interest income R21.9 bln vs R17.4 bln * Shares up 31 pct this year (Adds CEO and analyst quotes, details) By Helen Nyambura-Mwaura JOHANNESBURG, Sept 11 (Reuters) &#8211; FirstRand&#8217;s push to sell high interest loans to lower income customers fuelled a 26 percent rise [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[830,2370,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-14484","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-news","8":"tag-reuters","9":"tag-south-africa-2","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14484\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}