Capitec - ‘We’re Retailers. We think Client, then Risk.’

Gerrie Fourie spent 25 years helping build Capitec into South Africa’s largest bank by market capitalisation. In this Peregrine Capital’s Building Conviction podcast he talks about coming into banking as an outsider, and why it took the market twelve years to understand the business.

When Michiel le Roux phoned to ask whether he wanted to help build a bank, Gerrie Fourie was at Stellenbosch Farmers Winery. He knew liquor distribution well and banking not at all. He comes back to that more than once in the conversation.

“We’re retailers, we think client and then risk,” he tells Jacques Conradie on the third episode of Building Conviction. “Bankers look at risk, risk, risk, and then client.”

Fourie was part of the founding team in 2001, became chief executive in 2014 and retired as CEO in July 2025 to a Non-Executive role. By then Capitec had more than 24 million clients and was the country’s largest bank by market capitalisation. Much of the hour is about how that client-first approach worked in practice.

Twelve years to be taken seriously

Capitec said from the start that it wanted to bank 95% of South Africans. The market didn’t believe it and for years treated the company as a microlender. Fourie reckons it was about twelve years before investors properly understood what Capitec was doing.

He calls the early expansion guerrilla warfare. The first real cluster of branches wasn’t in a major city, and his explanation of why is one of the better parts of the episode.

One card for everyone

Every client got the same gold card, whatever they earned. “Why do you have to classify clients?” Fourie asks. “All clients are the same, they need to be treated the same.”

Hidden fees and asterisked pricing still clearly annoy him, as do banking hours set for the bank’s convenience. Capitec kept to a few flat fees and opened its branches from 7am to 10pm. “You do what your client wants,” he says. 

He applied the same thinking to keeping things simple. When Capitec bought Mercantile Bank it inherited 64 products, and Fourie gave the team three weeks to cut the list. He gives the number they ended up with, along with the rule he uses for product ranges generally.

The 25% rule

Underneath all of this was a fixed capital rule: everything was priced for a 25% return on equity, not more and not less. Fourie resisted years of pressure to return capital to shareholders, and he says that buffer is what got Capitec through the 2018 short-seller attack and through COVID. When returns came in above target, the excess didn’t go to shareholders. He explains where it went instead.

Viceroy

The 2018 attack is where the conversation gets most personal. Viceroy Research accused Capitec of hiding bad debts, and the share price fell about 30% in a single day. “The hardest part wasn’t the process,” Fourie says. “It’s the fact that you’ve built a business and they’re actually attacking your integrity.” There was no playbook for it.

What comes next

Fourie handed over to Graham Lee in July last year, and after some time away, rejoined the Capitec Board in August this year. His view on retirement: “You can strategically challenge things, but on detail, stay away.”

He’s enthusiastic about what AI means for a business with as much data as Capitec. A valuation that used to take him three or four days now takes about an hour, and credit committee reviews that ran to forty pages and two weeks are done in half an hour.

He also sees plenty of room to grow within the existing client base. Capitec has about 26 million clients and close to 900 branches, and holds roughly 40% of the personal banking market. In business banking, insurance and value-added services its share is still in the low single digits. After that, there’s international expansion.

The Conviction Card

Every guest ends by answering the same question. Fourie closes the episode with his Conviction Card “If you believe in something, go and do it and execute on it,” he says. “Too many people talk and don’t deliver. It’s not ideas that count — it’s the people that go execute and do them.”

The full conversation is available now on Building Conviction, Peregrine Capital’s podcast series, on all leading podcast platforms, with new episodes every few weeks.

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This podcast is produced by Peregrine Capital (Pty) Ltd, an authorised Financial Services Provider. Views expressed by speakers are their own at the time of recording, may change without notice, and don't necessarily reflect those of Peregrine Capital. Nothing in this podcast is an offer, solicitation or recommendation to buy or sell any security; Peregrine Capital and its associated funds may hold positions in companies discussed, which listeners should bear in mind. Statements on strategy, targets or expected performance are forward-looking, involve risk and uncertainty, and actual results may differ materially. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance. Listening does not create a client or advisory relationship with Peregrine Capital. This episode was recorded on 14 July 2026.