Investec has secured the crown of South Africa’s best-performing lender for the second year running. Despite being one of the country’s smaller lenders — its asset base base is around a fifth the size of the country’s largest lender Standard Bank — Investec took first position in four out of the eight measures tracked in the 2021 performance rankings.
The bank’s chart-topping performance in asset quality in particular stands out. After a tough year for South African lenders, Investec’s non-performing loan ratio stood at just 2.6% for the year ending March 2021, compared with 4.37% (as of December 2020) for FirstRand, the next best performer in the country.