Capitec struggled for its first five years. It is now South Africa’s most valuable commercial bank by market value.
Formed in 1997 from micro-lending businesses and registered as a bank in 2001, Capitec went after the low-income market and grew from 5 million clients to over 24 million.
Capitec was formed in 1997 through the acquisition of micro-lending businesses such as Smartfin and Finaid by PSG, an independent financial services group. It registered as a bank in 2001, launching as Daxacom, and listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange as Capitec Bank Holdings on 18 February 2002. Michiel le Roux, who co-founded the bank and was its first chief executive, saw the approach of his former employer, Boland Bank, as archaic and went looking for a new banking model.
Slow years
The early years were not easy. The bank only managed to attract a notable amount of deposits in 2006, and the period from 2001 to mid-2006 was plagued with challenges that stagnated growth. It stayed with the low-income retail market, however.
Scale
When Gerrie Fourie became chief executive in 2014, Capitec was a challenger bank serving 5 million people. When he retired in July 2025, it served over 24 million. In July 2026 it was reported that the shares had risen 191 percent over five years, and that the bank had the largest market capitalisation of all South African commercial banks.
The lesson for founders in finance is persistence in an unfashionable segment. Capitec went where the incumbents did not, and stayed long enough for the model to prove itself.
