Financial Modelling Podcast

Part of the reason for my involvement in the Ivy AI fund is my fascination with the AI ecosystem.

Six SA banks and one number that tells you where the next decade of growth lives.

Non-interest revenue as a percentage of total income, FY25:

: 53.9%
: 42.0%
: 39.1%
: 38.0%
: 37.7%southafrica : 36.0%

This is the data monetisation league table (whether the banks call it that or not).

Every transaction fee, insurance cross-sell, VAS purchase and rewards redemption is a data rich event that compounds. The higher the NIR ratio, the more the franchise is being monetised through customer behaviour rather than balance sheet spread.

FNB and FirstRand have been demonstrating this for years. Ebucks turned FNB's transactional data into one of the most sophisticated loyalty engines on the continent and it shows up in the numbers!

Standard Bank's UCount programme plays a similar role and the data foundation is clearly there. Now we wait to see how aggressively it gets commercialised in the next strategy cycle.

Capitec is the outlier at 53.9% because they built VAS, Capitec Connect and an inhouse insurance licence as primary product lines (not as add-ons). The more your customers transact, the more your data assets compound.

The real opportunity isn't catching Capitec on ratio, but rather recognising that the data already flowing through these platforms is the most under monetised asset on the balance sheet.

That's the gap we work on every day at Alternata.

→ alternata.io