On Saturday, March 31, 2012, at 8:30pm, millions of homes, offices and cities will be going dark for Earth Hour. This global environmental initiative challenges individuals, businesses, governments and communities to turn out their lights for one hour to show their support for environmentally sustainable action.

This year, Earth Hour's ‘I Will If You Will’ concept, invites individuals and organisations to challenge others to an ongoing environmental commitment beyond the hour. Read more »

Today marks an exciting day for Standard Bank South Africa and our customers. We heard the concerns our customers had about our fees and we’ve listened. Get ready for a new era with Standard Bank, we’re moving forward.

After months of hard work and forward thinking, we’ve found a way to give back to our customers by revising some of our products, the fees and what we offer within our products. This means no hidden fees, but great value and simpler products. Read more »

Botswana is a country famous for its wildlife, diamond mining and tourism and is known as being the most robust country on the African continent, politically and economically.

Being a country with one of Africa’s most advanced banking systems, Stanbic Bank Botswana is proudly a part of this and celebrates its 20th anniversary. With a historical connection to the Standard Bank Group going as far back as the 1890s, back then, the Bechuanaland Protectorate administration and a number of traders in the area held bank accounts at Standard Bank Group’s Mafekeng (Mahikeng) branch. Read more »

At Standard Bank we are encouraged, but not surprised, to see how passionately the social media community has responded to our impending complaint to the ASA (Advertising Standard Authority).

The announcement was made in social media because we value our online communities and felt that they should hear it first hand from us. We respect our community’s views and value the transparent relationship we share with them. Read more »

This follows advertisements by FNB in which it claims that it is the only bank to offer free Online, Cellphone and Telephone Banking. Standard Bank also offers free Cellphone, Online and Telephone Banking and, in fact, lodged a similar complaint against FNB with the ASA in March 2003.

At the time FNB acknowledged that it was not the first bank to offer free Internet and Telephone Banking and undertook to retract the claim “from all FNB’s current and future advertising”. The ASA Directorate accepted FNB’s undertaking. Read more »

We were recently chatting to our Group Chief Economist and Global Head of Research, Goolam Ballim and he shared with us his insights into the 2012 economy. Here are some of the key points we picked up on:

Europe’s sovereign debt-servicing difficulty, the centerpiece of current risks to global welfare, is another in a series of post-recession gusts that have shaken the world. Read more »

Online classifieds are becoming increasingly popular in South Africa because they offer an easy way to sell stuff you don’t need.

If you are selling anything online you need to be careful to not fall prey to fraudsters who sometimes trawl these sites.

We’ve become aware that some criminals contact sellers to buy their goods and pay by a direct deposit into their Standard Bank (or other bank) accounts.

The buyer then gets an SMS that looks a lot like a deposit notification.

None the wiser, the seller hands over the goods or dispatches them via courier. Read more »