A year in a fast-changing, increasingly competitive banking industry can have a dramatic impact on the fortunes of SA banks. But for Absa, SA’s third-largest bank by market value, 2019 could turn out to be the year of counting losses.
For example, Absa is the only one of the big four banks yet to join a banking-fees price war that has seen the likes of Nedbank, FirstRand and Standard Bank promise consumers everything from zero-fee bank accounts to actually paying the man on the street to bank with them. That stock market performance also lags far behind the broader banking index, which has notched up around 11% over the same period, and reflects Absa's own operational underperformance in recent years.
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