On Friday, May 30 2014 the Marketers Association of Zimbabwe (MAZ) launched Superbrand 2014 at a local hotel.
With Omen Muza
A highlight – or rather a culmination – of this process is the unveiling of the top 200 brands of 2014.
Inevitably, some of these are from the banking sector and they line up as follows, in no particular order: CABS, CBZ Bank Limited, MBCA Bank Limited, ZB Bank Limited, BancABC, POSB, Standard Chartered Bank, Barclays Bank, Stanbic Bank, FBC Holdings Limited and NMB Bank Limited.
The winner and the two runner-ups in the banking and other categories will be announced in due course. All the Mobile Networks Operators (MNOs) – Econet Wireless, Telecel and NetOne – which now play in the financial sector space through their mobile money offerings, also showed up on the list.
ZimSwitch, the country’s sole national electronic funds switch, which processes domestic card-based ATM and POS transactions for its member financial institutions, in real time online also made the list.
Marketing and branding experts will tell you that a number of factors such as the size of advertising and marketing budgets, the age of the companies, origin/parentage or shareholding, size of the underlying businesses and availability of adequate capital, among others go towards making a superbrand.
In this installment, I focus on a few of the measurable aspects in relation to the current top banking brands.
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Age Age definitely has something to do with superbrand status. All the banks that made the superbrand list for 2014 have been in existence for 20 or more years, with the exception of FBC Holdings Limited, which probably owes its presence on the list to its considerable size.
The fact that only one mobile money platform – Ecocash – made the list and there is no place for TeleCash and Onewallet may also corroborate the link between age and superbrand status.
Parentage/ownership A look at the preliminary results of the top banking brands for 2014 shows that though it is important given the inherent support structures that come with it, being foreign owned on its own is not enough; a bank has to be old enough too.
This probably explains the absence of Ecobank Zimbabwe and AfrAsia Bank – solid brands in their own right which are however fairly recent entrants to the Zimbabwean banking sector – from the list of Superbrands.
Profitability Based on financial results for the year ended 31 December 2013, of the 15 commercial banks surveyed, seven of the top banking brands of 2014 (Stanbic, CBZ Bank Limited, BancABC, Standard Chartered Bank, FBC Bank Limited, MBCA Bank Limited and Barclays Bank of Zimbabwe Limited, in that order) make up the top seven when ranked according to profitability.
The exceptions are ZB Bank Limited, POSB and NMB Bank Limited which are ranked 9th, 11th and 14th respectively in terms of profitability. CABS on the other hand, is by far the biggest building society in both profitability and asset terms. The statistics therefore go some way in suggesting a link between profitability and superbrand status.
Balance sheet size What has size got to do with anything? Those who content that size is not everything might ask. Well, not according to what the relationship between the 2014 banking Superbrands and the sizes of their balance sheets suggests.
The top banking brands of 2014 all make it into the top 10 of banks ranked according to balance sheet size (CBZ Bank Limited, BancABC, Stanbic Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, FBC Bank, Barclays Bank, NMB Bank Limited, ZB Bank Limited and MBCA Bank Limited, in that order), with the exception POSB, a savings bank which is governed by a different set of rules from the commercial banks.
Who will rule the roost in 2014? CBZ Bank Limited was the winner of the 2013 Superbrand Award in the Banking Sector, while Barclays Bank and Stanbic Bank came second and third respectively. So which banks will be the top banking brands in 2014?
