← Back to Library Capitec at 25: The Inside Story Silicon Overdrive Founders Series
Capitec group CEO Graham Lee joins Colin Iles on the AWS Founders Series to explain the four founding principles behind 26 million clients, how the bank plans across four time frames at once, where AI is already in production, and why payments is the next space to be disrupted.
VIDEO
Chapters 0:00 Introduction 0:52 The themes: why Capitec works, and can it stay young 2:50 Why are 26 million people using Capitec? 3:51 The four founding principles 5:02 Were the principles baked in from day one? 6:03 What clients like: simplicity and side by side consulting 7:48 Affordable, but not the cheapest 8:43 Why Capitec is doubling down on branches 9:40 Serving 95 percent of South Africa, humans with humans 11:50 Why not just raise fees and take the margin? 13:07 Designing the entire organisation for affordability 14:46 Keeping a long term view as the fourth CEO 15:38 One bottom line, no silos, at the money options 17:10 Planning and acting in four time frames 19:01 How Graham takes decisions, and the word no 20:31 The lenses: client first, then the cultural anchors 21:22 Autonomy, regulation and death by committee 22:24 Why culture is a daily fight 24:23 Hiring for values, and exiting the wrong people 26:02 Product health, and what sits on the dashboard 27:47 Do you actually look at your competitors? 29:22 Retailers opening banks: Pepkor, Shoprite and Revolut 30:39 How the Capitec model evolves from here 33:12 Business banking, insurance, the MVNO and beyond banking 35:09 Credit is time and opportunity, not money 37:25 Thin file lending and alternative data 39:44 AI across all three tiers 42:23 What changed in the last six months 43:48 Vishing, friction and the fraud trade off 45:48 Trust: stability, security and explaining why 47:27 Staying out of the ivory tower 51:08 Could an autonomous bank run on 20 people? 52:20 Payments, BankservAfrica, the SARB and PayInc 54:36 The lesson from Pix in Brazil 55:34 The hardest moments: 2008, COVID credit and Viceroy 57:37 Closing