About 40% of the South African adult population — or about 11-million people — have at least one basic bank account, a South African Reserve Bank publication has estimated.
This compares poorly with the number of “banked” Americans — about 90% of the total population.
However, the publication, Labour Markets and Social Frontiers, notes that 35% of Brazilian house- holds and only 5,9% of Kenyans have an account.
In South Africa the distribution of bank accounts strongly correlates with living standard measures based largely on ownership of durable goods.
In the bottom two market segments 8% and 12% of people have transaction accounts, while the proportion for the top two segments is 87% and 91%.
The bank notes three distinct groups among South Africa’s “unbanked”.
Nearly six million are economically active individuals, mainly in rural areas (35%) and informal settlements (25%). Twenty-one percent of this group is in full or part-time formal employment, some with large companies.
The “unbanked” also include 1,9-million pensioners, typically in marginal rural settlements, and 2,9-million students over the age of 16 in secondary or tertiary education.
The Reserve Bank study does, however, indicate that about 80% of people in formal employment — 5,4-million — have access to a contractual savings mechanism such as a pension or provident fund.
If one includes informal “rotating savings and credit associations” such as stokvels, 12,7-million adults make use of some savings product.
Use of credit products is harder to estimate. However, the largest credit bureau reports over 16-million credit-active individuals, or 55% of adults. Of these, 2,4-million (15%) have had judgements recorded against them in the past three years.