Purpose and strategy

Our belief in Africa is rooted in the vast possibilities and opportunities it presents. We navigate these opportunities with integrated thinking, aligning our purpose and strategic approach to emerging trends, ensuring that the execution of our strategy creates enduring value.

Our purpose

Africa is our home, and we create sustainable, inclusive growth by focusing on 3 strategic priorities:

Transform client experience

Execute with excellence

Drive sustainable growth and value

Our strategy

Our strategy involves maintaining our position as Africa’s leading financial services organisation and continuing to achieve leading market shares wherever we compete. We are currently the only African financial services organisation with market-leading positions in South Africa, a growing franchise in Africa Regions and a strong presence and deep capabilities across 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Our strategic priorities

Our three strategic priorities provide a framework for our execution. They are:

Transform the client experience

We strive to transform the client experience. We draw on the power of technology and our people’s expertise and empathy to meet our clients’ needs. We know that our clients require comprehensive solutions and not just financial products. We cannot always independently deliver these solutions, so we collaborate with partners to meet our clients’ needs.

Execute with excellence

We execute with excellence. We are good stewards of our shareholder’s resources, we provide relevant products and services, and ensure that our people and systems are reliable, resilient, and trusted. We do the right business, the right way.

Drive sustainable growth and value

We create sustainable growth and value for our shareholders, society, and the planet. To achieve these we carefully balance social, economic, and environmental considerations. We aim to become the leading enabler of the just energy transition for Africa, accelerating economic growth and human development and supporting our continent’s climate adaptation and resilience.

Our 2025 targets

We have set targets to 2025 against which we track our progress. Find out more about these strategic priorities and targets.

Transform client experience

Revenue growth
7% - 9%
compound annual growth rate from 2020 to 2025

Execute with excellence

Cost-to-income ratio
approaching 50% by 2025

Drive sustainable growth and value

Return on equity
17% - 20%
within the target range by 2025

Our values

Serving our customers

We do everything in our power to ensure that we provide our customers with the products, services and solutions to suit their needs.

Growing our people

We encourage and help our people to develop to their full potential and measure our leaders on how well they grow and challenge the people they lead.

Delivering to our shareholders

We understand that we earn the right to exist by providing appropriate long-term returns to our shareholders. We strive to meet our targets and commitments.

Being proactive

We strive to stay ahead by anticipating rather than reacting, but our actions are always carefully considered.

Working in teams

We, and all aspects of our work, are interdependent. We appreciate that, as teams, we can achieve much greater things, and we value teams within and across the group.

Respecting each other

We have the highest regard for human dignity. We respect each other and what we stand for and recognise that there are obligations corresponding with our individual rights.

Upholding the highest levels of integrity

Our entire business model is based on trust and integrity as perceived by our stakeholders, especially our customers.

Constantly raising the bar

We have confidence in our ability to achieve ambitious goals, and we celebrate success, but we must never allow ourselves to become complacent or arrogant.

Sustainability reporting centre

View and download the policies and documents in support of our commitment to driving Africa’s sustainable growth.