The award recognises a bank in each region that has made the most positive changes over the last 12 months and fundamentally transformed its business model or offering to clients in the period under review.
The bank should also have demonstrated that this transformation is now paying dividends in terms of business performance.
Absa CEO René van Wyk said the company was honoured to receive the award.
“Today marks exactly a year since we launched our new brand to the market. The award recognises the work we have done and continue to do to completely re-engineer the business, making it more agile and digital to respond to dynamic client needs. This journey continues, but we are humbled by the recognition for the work we have done so far.”
The Euromoney recognition also underlines how, after its first year as a standalone African bank, the Absa brand has grown into its bold and passionate personality.
“The name change marked the start of a new era for the group; it was an extraordinary milestone that set us firmly on course to become the financial partner of choice on the continent,” says van Wyk.
Barclays Africa Group announced in March 2018 that the company will be renamed Absa Group Limited and that it intended to operate as Absa across its operations in Africa by 2020.
Free to pursue its own path as a standalone company, the group set out a new corporate strategy, resulting in a new business purpose statement that positioned the bank as enabler, helping individuals, businesses and society to ‘bring their possibility to life’.
It also resulted in the creation of a refreshed brand as an expression of the bank’s new promise and identity. Whereas Absa previously represented mainly a South African bank, the new brand was fit for a future-focused African bank in the digital age, and now represents a group of banks across multiple countries in Africa, with an international office in London and another planned for the US.
The brand refresh opened a new chapter in Absa’s long legacy of serving African citizens for more than 100 years and gave the bank the opportunity to shape their own destiny as a proudly African bank with global scalability.
The refreshed brand was unveiled in South Africa in July last year and the rebranding of the group’s Barclays-branded subsidiary companies in countries outside of South Africa as well as most other subsidiaries will commence later this year.
