Absa cuts fees in fight for clients

ABSA introduced new offerings yesterday that would help its customers reduce their bank charges, in a bid to retain its customer base and remain the biggest retail bank in SA.

ABSA, SA’s largest retail bank by client size, introduced new offerings yesterday that would help its customers reduce their bank charges, in a bid to retain its customer base and remain the biggest bank in SA.

The move follows calls from authorities such as National Treasury and the National Consumer Commission for banks to do more on the transparency and reduction of fees.

Last week, First National Bank (FNB) announced it would remove the cost of debit-card and cheque-card purchases for personal customers and introduce more incentives to retain customers or lure them from rivals. FNB already has reward programmes for its clients.

In March, Standard Bank also introduced a new product that cut fees, including offering unlimited, free electronic transactions. It is also working on introducing a rewards programme.

Absa’s head of products, Saks Ntombela, said: “We can never rely on a favourable market environment to drive growth. Consumers are under financial distress and are looking for more value for money.”

With Absa’s new offer the client can save more if he or she has a credit card and home loan as well as an Absa cheque account.

Arrie Rautenbach, Absa’s head of retail markets, said he was confident the Barclays-owned bank would continue to have the largest retail customer base.

He said following the bank’s R10bn acquisition of Edcon store cards last week, Absa would gain access to more than 3-million customers of the retailer.

Mr Rautenbach said not all of these Edcon clients were Absa customers and the bank’s plan was to encourage them to switch to Absa, which has just over 11,5million customers. “Our intention is to absolutely grow our base.”