A cooling down in the banking sector

Friday, March 27, 2026 | 80 Views |

Man in the street: The concentration of wholesale deposits amongst banks impacted ordinary consumers as lending rates rose nearly four percentages points higher than the BoB's benchmark last year PIC: MORERI SEJAKGOMO

As sure as the sun rises every day, banks have made healthy profits where each year is higher than the last. A rare slowdown occurred last year due to the economic contraction, but analysts are seeing more structural concerns, writes MBONGENI MGUNI

In 2007 commercial banks’ collective net incomes first breached the P1 billion mark. Today, the country’s top bank routinely makes P1 billion in pretax profits every six months.

Banks have grown from the “comfortable duopoly” of Standard Chartered and the former Barclays Bank in the 1950s, to become the country’s most consistently profitable sector, an industry that has ploughed unfazed through the recessions that have dampened the broader economy.

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