C3-TymeBank in 2019 - Chasing The Millions

HBP# NA0712
TymeBank in 2019: Chasing the Millions

Michael M. Goldman, University of San Francisco &
University of Pretoria
Nicola Kleyn, Erasmus University Rotterdam & University
of Pretoria
Luisa Mazinter, University of Pretoria
“Banks are dinosaurs.” - Bill Gates, 19941
Luisa Mazinter walked to her open plan desk on the 4th floor of a modern office
building in Rosebank, Johannesburg on Friday, August 23, 2019. As the Chief
Marketing Officer of TymeBank, South Africa’s first fully-digital bank that had
launched six months earlier, Mazinter was proud of what she and her team had
achieved, but was equally anxious about how to sustain the customer acquisition
momentum, and increase account activity rates. By August, TymeBank was onboarding
approximately 100,000 customers per month, with approximately 25 percent of the
total of over 700,000 acquired customers considered active.
However, the past two months in South Africa had also seen the launch of
Discovery Bank by the well-known health, life and risk insurance group Discovery
Limited, an aggressive South African financial services business which since its launch
in 1992 had built a global footprint. Discovery Bank had signed-up 22,000 customers
since June 2019. The Discovery Limited CEO, Adrian Gore, argued that Discovery
Bank was “not a skinny fintech play that is an app. It’s a proper capital-heavy proper
bank, which is mobile-led and has a full retail offering.”2 In April 2019, Nedbank, one
of the country’s major banks dropped the monthly fee of its Pay As You Use account
to zero, and in May, African Bank, a smaller competitor, launched a new no-monthly-
fees account. In addition, a group of high-profile former executives of First National
Bank were preparing for a mid-2020 launch of South Africa’s third digital bank, Bank
Zero, which was planning to introduce an exclusively app-only mutual bank.
With increasing competition from the dominant major banks and the looming
threat of the new entrants, Mazinter needed to decide how to balance investments
between brand building and performance marketing in her campaign proposal options
for the coming four months. There were three marketing objectives that needed to be
achieved by the end of 2019: increase active account use and “stickiness,” continue to
drive acquisition towards 1 million opened accounts, and celebrate the expected 1
-----------------------------
Copyright  2022 by the Case Research Journal and by Michael M. Goldman, Nicola Kleyn, and Luisa
Mazinter. An earlier version of this case was presented at the 2020 NACRA conference. The authors
thank Gina Grandy and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback on earlier drafts
of this case.
TymeBank in 2019: Chasing the Millions 1
This document is authorized for use only in Prof. Omkumar Krishnan's Services Marketing, at IIM Kozhikode - EPGP Kozhikode Campus from Aug 2022 to Jan 2023.
million customer milestone. Internal modelling predicted that the active customer rate
would fall short of the target of 50 percent, based on existing churn, dormancy rates,
and account usage rates, and showed that account activation rates flattened after the
first 100 days. How much should she continue to invest in brand building for the six-
month-old bank, especially with the limited resources and increasing budget pressures
of a new business? Should the focus shift further to performance marketing activities
instead, driving acquisition and activation targets? Beyond the urgent choices for the
remainder of 2019, TymeBank executives also wanted to attract another million
customers during 2020, in line with their strategy to acquire a substantial share of the
addressable market of 21 million underserved retail banking customers in South Africa.
Mazinter believed in the power and relevance of the bank’s mission, and that
broadening economic participation through more accessible banking would unlock the
human potential of South Africa. She also knew that some tough and urgent marketing
choices around the prioritization and allocation of scarce resources were required to
achieve this.
THE BIRTH OF TYME

TymeBank had its origins in 2012 in a Deloitte Consulting project for MTN, a leading
mobile network operator in Africa and the Middle East. At the time, Coenraad Jonker,
a former law firm CEO and former head of inclusive banking at Standard Bank, was
the Deloitte Consulting partner leading the project to relaunch MTN’s mobile banking
service in South Africa, using the banking license of the South African Bank of Athens.
When Deloitte had to withdraw from the project due to a potential conflict of interest
with the Bank of Athens, a client of theirs in Greece, and MTN declined the offer to
buy the business, Jonker and Tjaard van der Walt, a long-time friend and colleague of
his, founded Tyme Capital and bought the business themselves. The partners signed
deals with MTN and the Pick n Pay retail group to secure their continued support for
the venture. The business name Tyme was an acronym for Take Your Money
Everywhere, a proposition that represented Jonker’s mission to create more accessible
banking for all.
In 2014, the multinational Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), expressed an
interest in acquiring Tyme Capital for its banking technology platform which was
designed to meet the unique needs of emerging markets. CBA hoped to grow its retail
operations in Indonesia, China, Vietnam, India, and South Africa by using Tyme
Capital’s digital core banking system and specifically its Wi-Fi-enabled self-service
kiosks that had introduced innovative, paperless biometric identity and proof-of-life
verification capabilities in compliance with global ‘know your customer’ authentication
regulations.3 CBA acquired Tyme Capital in January 2015 for approximately $30
million, took over its 80 employees, and formed TymeDigital by Commonwealth Bank
South Africa (TymeDigital).4
In October that year, the fintech business applied to the South African Reserve
Bank for a full banking license, which was finally awarded in September 2017. The
license was the first one issued to a new bank in South Africa in 17 years, with
TymeDigital poised to become the first fully digital bank to launch in the country. At
the time, the business operated a Money Transfer service in partnership with Pick n
Pay and had signed up 200,000 customers. The new bank planned to generate revenues
in the same way as other banks did: through transaction fees, interchange fees, and net
interest margin.
2 Case Research Journal •Volume 42• Issue 1• Winter 2022
In August 2017, Jonker recruited Mazinter to join the business as Chief Marketing
Officer. She had co-owned and run a successful marketing consultancy for 19 years,
specializing in developing brand marketing strategies and executing data-driven, digital,
social and direct marketing campaigns. Her projects included multi-year secondments
with brands and agencies that needed an in-house strategic resource to develop and
trial new business propositions or to drive the execution of new market opportunities.
In 2012 Mazinter was contracted by Deloitte Consulting to assist MTN with a second
ancillary business project, in parallel with the mobile banking project Jonker was
leading. Although Mazinter’s project was focused on developing a mobile media and
entertainment commercial strategy for MTN, she closely followed the development of
Jonker’s project that ultimately became Tyme Capital, and then TymeDigital. Mazinter
recalled: “After so many years of being a cheerleader for the Tyme business whilst
sitting on the outside, I jumped at the opportunity to come onboard to help the team
take it to market.” Her challenge was to develop a differentiated and disruptive
challenger banking brand, that would be perceived as a credible and trusted alternative
for mass-market customers, who were both disenchanted and underserved by their
current banks.
Shortly after TymeDigital was awarded its full banking license in September 2017,
billionaire industrialist Patrice Motsepe’s investment holding company African
Rainbow Capital (ARC), acquired a 10% share in the business. In mid-2018 CBA,
TymeDigital’s majority shareholder, faced intense scrutiny for its handling of anti-
money laundering and counter-terrorism financing protocols in Australia, which led to
top management changes and a refocus of its strategy on its home operations, resulting
in a decision to divest in many of the countries it considered non-core. In August,
Motsepe announced that ARC had acquired the remaining 90% of the business, with
TymeDigital’s founding team subsequently acquiring 20% of the bank from ARC. By
that stage, the business had just under 400,000 customers on its Money Transfer
platform. Motsepe argued then:
On completion, this transaction will culminate in the first black-owned and
controlled commercial, retail and digital bank in South Africa. Growth and
transformation of the economy remains an important objective and something
that all South Africans should be supporting. Economic growth will come
about as a result of on-going investment, including the type of investment we
are announcing today. Inclusivity in our economy is made easier when many
more people are able to participate – even more so when they are presented
with greater choice of bank products and when products are made available at
significantly lower bank costs relative to peers.5
ARC’s other financial services investments included Alexander Forbes Group
Holdings, which provided employee benefits, financial services and investment
solutions to over one million institutional and individual clients, and Indwe Risk
Services, a personal, business and specialist risk insurance advisory business that
provided coverage to over 100,000 families and business. Within telecommunications,
ARC was an investor in Rain, a start-up data-only mobile network. One of ARC’s
strategies was to explore growth synergies among the companies in their investment
portfolio. On November 2, 2018, the South African Reserve Bank approved ARC’s
acquisition of TymeDigital and the business was rebranded as TymeBank.
SOUTH AFRICAN BANKING CONTEXT
McKinsey & Company noted that in 2018 that Africa’s banking markets contrasted
strongly with the sluggish growth delivered by the global banking industry: “markets
are fast-growing and nearly twice as profitable as the global average… Africa’s retail
banking penetration stands at just 38 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), half
the global average for emerging markets.”6 Although South Africa’s GDP growth
remained weak at 0.8 percent for the second consecutive year, South African banks
reported double-digit profit growth in 2018. The unemployment rate hovered around
27 percent, although the rate was 55 percent for youth aged 15-24, and 34 percent for
those aged 25-34.7 Almost one-half of households earned less than $270 a month.8 A
2016 FinScope study defined 81 percent (31 million) South Africans as low income.9
As one of the most unequal countries in the world, South Africa was described by the
World Bank as a “dual economy,” with a “small high-skilled, high productivity
economy and on the other hand a large low-skilled, low-productivity one.”10 South
Africa was categorized as an upper-middle-income country with a gross national
income per capita of $5,750, similar to that of Peru, Serbia, and Thailand.11
A Nielsen study in 2018 showed that 32 percent of the population didn’t have a
bank account.12 In 2017, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) had found that only 24
percent of account holders made more than three monthly transactions of any kind,
and 60 percent of all transactions were conducted in cash.13 A 2017 study sponsored
by Mastercard found that using cash cost consumers $1.7 billion annually in direct
processing fees and indirect usage costs, such as the cost of travel, time, lost interest
and risk of theft.14 Low-income earners were found to forfeit four percent of their
earnings to these costs, compared to the national average of 1.1 percent. Mark Elliott,
the division president of Mastercard, Southern Africa argued:
Cash is the enemy of financial inclusion and of the poor. Too many South
Africans still need to trade off the demands of an hourly job with the need to
travel long distances to access cash, or stand in line to pay a bill. Many
consumers also face the dangers of being robbed when they come home with
their wages.15
Although approximately 70 percent of South African adults had a transactional
account, the BCG report stated that many account holders withdrew their entire pay-
check or welfare payment “almost as soon as they receive it.”16 One study respondent
said “the mattress doesn’t charge for small withdrawals,” while another stated: “If you
leave money in the account it loses value because of fees, first there is R350; the next
time I check, there is R300.”17 Respondents expressed a distrust of Automated Teller
Machines (ATMs), online and mobile banking, while also complaining that bank
branches were too far away from where they lived. A 2018 FinScope study reported an
increasing number of account holders (40 percent) either withdrew all their money as
soon as it was deposited into their account or had not used the account for at least 30
days.18 A relatively low rate of 13 percent of adults had a credit card, less than a third
of adults regularly set money aside in a formal savings account, while the defaults on
unsecured personal loans was 12 percent (for comparison, China and Germany were
below 2 percent, and the U.S. was below 4 percent).19 The BCG analysis in 2017 argued
that, to address financial exclusion, banks needed to create flexible and tailored
products, leverage the broader societal ecosystem beyond banking to localize channels,
embrace technology-enabled solutions, simplify risk processes, remove negative
intermediary behaviors, and improve fee, services, and repayment transparency.20
Mazinter outlined one of the major barriers to accessible banking in the market:
Having physical access to a bank is a major challenge for people living in rural
areas. They sometimes have to take two or three taxis to get to a bank branch
just to apply for an account; they then have to fill in a series of daunting and
often confusing forms, they have to wait in line for an hour or two to be served,
take another two or three taxis to get back home, and then have to go through
the whole frustrating journey a week later to collect their debit card from the
branch.
In 2018, South Africa had 10 commercial bank branches per 100,000 adults,
compared to a global average of 12, and average of 14 for other upper-middle-income
countries, and 20 for high-income countries. In contrast, South Africans’ access to
ATMs was 67 per 100,000 adults, which was a similar rate to that of ATMs in high-
income countries.21 In 2016, approximately one in four of South Africa’s 26,813 bank-
owned ATMs accepted deposits.22 A 2018 World Bank analysis found that the pricing
bundles of transactional accounts designed for low-income customers “appear
intended to drive customer behavior away from branch and ATM services to electronic
channels.”23 The study also highlighted the complexity involved in comparing aspects
of alternative account features.
The 2018 Nielsen survey also found that 23 percent of South Africans used Capitec
Bank as their primary bank, followed by ABSA and First National Bank (13 percent
each), Standard Bank (10 percent), and Nedbank (8 percent).24 Capitec had launched
in 2001 providing a simple low-cost transactional account for individuals, had passed
1 million active customers in 2007, and reached 9.2 million customers in 2017 – the
year it was ranked as the most long-term sustainable bank in the world by the UK’s
Lafferty Group.25 A PwC report in 2018 stated that the traditional banking competitors
in South Africa were responding to increased competition from digital players through
large-scale digital transformation efforts, including customer experience
improvements, new ways of working, and enterprise-wide cost reductions.26
PREPARING TO LAUNCH
Before CBA divested from South Africa, Mazinter’s plan was to soft-launch the new
brand with TymeCoach, a free financial education app that provided all South Africans
with their credit score alongside meaningful ways to better manage their finances.
TymeCoach was to be launched in September 2018 with the goal of generating interest
in, assessing the appetite for, and building salience and trust for a new banking brand
in the market. A base of prospects would also be built that would be tapped into when
TymeBank’s transactional account was launched a few months later. Mazinter argued
that a cautious approach was needed:
It was a tumultuous time for South African financial institutions. Traditional
banks were increasingly under fire for exorbitant fees, confusing fine print,
poor communication and a lack of innovation. The scandal surrounding the
recent failure of VBS Mutual Bank also did little to instill consumer confidence
or category credibility.
Earlier in 2018, VBS, a small mutual bank, had been placed under curatorship by
the South African Reserve Bank due to a serious liquidity crisis. Similar to American
consumers, only half of South African consumers had complete trust in their financial
services provider.27 Almost half of the 77 percent of South Africans whose main
language was not English or Afrikaans found the language used in financial paperwork
confusing, while less than a third understood the difference between banking products
offered.28 With the bank’s change of ownership, Mazinter and her team were tasked
with renaming and rebranding the business, and shifting the strategy to launch the full
transactional bank, instead of the TymeCoach app, by November 2018. Mazinter
recalled:
We immediately shelved our meticulous plans for a phased market entry, and
had three months to create a new brand and launch our full banking
proposition into the market. The lead time on reprinting our re-branded Visa
debit cards alone was nine weeks. We conceptualized, designed and positioned
an entirely new brand, designed a new Corporate Identity, and produced a new
set of branded assets, which included the manufacturing of rebranded metal
shrouds for our in-store kiosks and designing two sets of retail point of sale
material co-branded with our two retail partners. We also conceptualized and
produced the new bank launch campaign and developed the full range of
marketing collateral and campaign assets to support the launch concept. Many
in the business were convinced that it couldn’t be done in the time. But with a
deeply coordinated focus between the marketing team, our in-field team, our
creative and media agencies, and just sheer dogged determination, we managed
to get it all done in time.
Mazinter’s launch campaign objectives were to create national awareness of
TymeBank and its brand promise, communicate the bank’s value proposition and
unique offering across all target audience segments, attract one million customers to
the bank in its first year, and achieve an active customer rate of 48 percent by June
2020. The business considered customers active if they used their account more than
five times a month.
TymeBank soft-launched on Sunday, November 4, 2018 with its first kiosk going
live at the Pick n Pay store in Johannesburg’s Rosebank Mall. The following week five
more went live in Pick n Pay, and its sister brand, Boxer stores, reaching 25 kiosks by
the end of November. Mazinter recalled:
We had the geo-coordinates of all the stores in the network and devised a
master plan in the pre-launch phase to install our first 25 bank kiosks in stores
that would give us a representative reach of target customers country-wide for
our pilot campaign. From these key stores or “centroids” as we called them,
our kiosk installation team radiated outwards geographically, until we had
achieved sufficient national penetration to launch the bank above-the-line.
The five-kilometer geographic radiuses around each store were targeted using
Facebook, Instagram, and Google Display Network, with all creative executions and
an account origination call to action, for both in-store and online. A multivariate digital
media test campaign with 189 separate digital assets and creative executions was
designed so that TymeBank could evaluate which components of its value proposition,
and which combination of advertising channels, customer segments, conversion
journeys, key messaging, images, copy, and design variations converted prospects most
effectively. The geo-targeted response from early adopters allowed TymeBank and its
creative and digital media agencies, to quickly identify and fix teething problems, test a
range of research hypotheses, and optimize and streamline processes, audiences, media
and messaging. The team learned that creative executions which included the image of
the Visa debit card, and those with images of people who the target market could relate
to, performed best. The original 189 creative executions were consolidated down to
the best performing sets in preparation for the bank’s above-the-line launch.
New customers were able to open a fully FICA-compliant no-monthly-fee
EveryDay transactional account, and receive their personalized Visa debit card at a
TymeBank kiosk in under five minutes. In South Africa, the Financial Intelligence
Center Act required financial institutions to know who they were doing business with,
which typically involved customers providing a physical identification document, and
recent proof of residence. This was equivalent to a ‘know your customer’ process
required by regulated banks globally. No documents were required to open a
TymeBank account – customers just needed to know their South African identification
number and have their mobile phone with them. The ‘know your customer’ process
was completed through the capture and verification of biometric and other personal
data at the kiosk, comparing the data presented to that held by the South African
Department of Home Affairs and other large online databases. The kiosks then printed
and dispensed a personalized Visa debit card, which was linked to the top-ranked Pick
n Pay Smart Shopper loyalty program, allowing customers to earn loyalty points both
at Pick n Pay and wherever else they used their TymeBank card, a Smart Shopper
program first. TymeBank customers could also open a limited functionality account
online via the bank’s responsive website, then go into store to collect their debit card
by capturing their biometric data at the TymeBank kiosk. Customers could manage
their accounts through the TymeBank website and mobile banking app.
In November 2018, Pick n Pay, which had a combined annual 28 million retail
footfall with mass discounter Boxer, had been voted the most influential brand in the
country, scoring highly on the survey’s dimensions of engagement, trustworthiness,
leading-edge, respect and presence.29 Mazinter explained that “customers could walk
across the aisle with their brand-new debit card dispensed by the TymeBank kiosk to
one of the retail till points, deposit cash, and immediately start using their account.”
TymeBank had developed a proprietary deposit-taking system integrated with Pick n
Pay’s retail Point of Sale system, which was not available from any other bank.
In addition to being a transactional banking account, the EveryDay account was
also bundled with GoalSave, a savings tool that attracted an annual interest rate of six
percent from day one, seven percent after 30 days, and nine percent after 90 days. The
bank offered customers up to 10 percent annual interest on their savings if they gave
the bank 10 days’ notice of their intention to withdraw funds that had been in the
savings tool for 91 days or longer. First National Bank offered an annual interest rate
of 5.25 percent, Nedbank’s was between 3.5 percent to 5.25 percent, and Capitec
offered between 5.1 percent to 5.65 percent depending on the amount in savings.30
The TymeBank team believed that they had ‘cracked the code’ of financial services
adoption by overcoming the physical access, financial costs, and emotional complexity
and mistrust barriers that existed in the market. Firstly, the retail distribution model
and proprietary kiosk technology meant that customer onboarding could happen
where customers already did their shopping, during the more extended shopping hours
retailers offered over traditional banking hours. It also enabled the new bank to achieve
national reach from day one, requiring minimal infrastructure and headcount
investment (see Exhibit 1). Secondly, the cloud hosting infrastructure and digital-first
design of the bank’s systems and processes resulted in lower operating costs, leading
to savings that could be passed on to the customer. Lastly, a simple product portfolio,
supported by a relevant and inspiring brand positioning provided an appealing
customer value proposition (see Exhibit 2). By the eve of the official launch on
February 24, 2019, TymeBank had rolled out 400 kiosks in retail locations country-
wide, and had onboarded 40,000 customers.
THE FIRST SIX MONTHS

TymeBank was formally introduced to South Africa through an integrated multi-
channel brand launch campaign, using TV, radio, press, public relations, digital, mobile
and social media channels. A 2019 U.S.-based study had found that using more
channels delivered better response rates,31 while a 2018 European study demonstrated
that TV advertising for Financial Services brands delivered 66 percent of advertising-
generated profit,32 and a multi-channel advertising campaign provided a long-term
multiplier of 1.9 times the short-term effect.33 Mazinter recalled:
At launch we had to strike the right balance between introducing a credible,
trustworthy yet disruptive challenger brand in the market, while acquiring new
customers at scale in order to meet some very ambitious growth targets for the
business. And we had to do both these things with very limited resources at
our disposal.
The TymeBank brand positioning attempted to balance inspiration with aspiration,
while communicating the bank’s overarching purpose of creating a platform for
financial inclusion. The launch campaign, entitled ‘You’ve Got This’, featured over 30
South Africans talking about their real, personal and non-financial assets and liabilities.
Mazinter stated: “The common link amongst all of them was their attitude: you can see
that they know who they are and who they’re going to be. What they needed was a
bank that recognized their potential and gave them the support and the tools they
needed to achieve their goals.” The ‘You’ve Got This’ umbrella idea was sparked by
the intersection between the brand promise, and an audience insight that current
circumstances do not define an individual’s future (see Exhibit 3). TymeBank was
positioned as: “A bank that believes in, and backs, you and your potential.”34 During
the launch period, brand marketing received approximately 70 percent of TymeBank’s
overall marketing and media budget, with 30 percent invested in performance
marketing. Public Relations was used extensively to build brand credibility and amplify
reach, especially given the newsworthiness of TymeBank’s launch.
Post the launch campaign Mazinter re-balanced the marketing budget in line with
the guidance of well-known marketing effectiveness researchers Les Binet and Peter
Field to invest 60-65% of the budget in brand marketing.35 The brand’s target audience
represented the majority of working-class South Africans described by the Living
Standards Measure categories 5 – 8. At the time, marketers in South Africa divided the
population into ten Living Standards Measure levels, as an index of social welfare,
which correlated closely with income. The higher the level, the higher the standard of
living. Mazinter’s above-the-line media budget of approximately $3 million represented
a 3 percent share of voice in the banking category in South Africa (see Exhibit 4).
Prior to Discovery Bank’s launch, Mazinter and her team had achieved a 9 percent
online share-of-voice in the category, an unprecedented result for a previously
unknown brand.
TymeBank developed co-branded in-store messaging and point-of-sale collateral
specific to each retail partner, along with in-store retail TV and radio spots, and staff
canteen radio, posters and leaflets. Mazinter recalled how Pick n Pay’s executive head
of marketing described the impact of the six weeks’ in-store launch campaign phase as
“the stores went bumble-bee” in reference to the TymeBank corporate identity colors.
TymeBank sourced their in-store brand ambassadors from Harambee Youth
Employment Accelerator, a leading not-for-profit social enterprise in the country that
specialized in finding, screening, training, and placing first-time job seekers. The young
ambassadors were recruited from the local communities around each retail store, were
selected based on their friendly, compassionate personalities and customer service
potential, and given intensive training on product knowledge and work readiness skills.
When the TymeBank data science team analyzed the customer acquisition rates
post-launch against the acquisition rates of the soft launch, they calculated that the
integrated above-the-line launch campaign had delivered an increase in new customer
acquisitions of 264 percent. Without the integrated marketing campaign, TymeBank’s
original account onboarding trend projections suggested the bank would acquire less
than 300,000 customers by the end of 2019.
DRIVING USAGE
TymeBank deployed an extensive range of direct marketing campaigns, using email and
mobile messaging channels to drive account origination, stimulate usage and build
customer relationships. This was the first phase of a comprehensive customer lifecycle
communication plan designed by Mazinter (see Exhibit 6). The plan included a range
of ‘get, keep, and grow’ activities to drive customer acquisition, account activation and
retention communications, which included financial literacy, product education,
product usage triggers, and behavioral nudges. A marketing automation tool was used
to trigger a personalized customer welcome pack in the form of email and mobile text
messages, and a sequence of 3 – 5 behavioural nudges that were triggered automatically
based on customer account status and account activation behavior post welcome.
Immediate usage of a new account opened at an in-store kiosk was encouraged by the
brand ambassadors in the store, and then reinforced by a sequential series of
personalized and automated direct marketing communications thereafter.
Performance marketing channels, which by August 2019 were receiving close to
40 percent of the overall marketing and media budget, included paid digital, social and
search, as well as mobile text and email marketing. TymeBank achieved an average
open rate with email marketing of 50 percent and average click-through rate of 15
percent (for comparison, the Financial Services industry averages in South Africa were
28.4 percent and 4.6 percent respectively). Mobile text message marketing achieved an
average conversion rate resulting in account origination of 2.8 percent (against a
Financial services industry average of 0.5 percent). Various experiments with
behavioral segmentation and targeting were conducted and proved the power of the
multiplier effect, with the best performing experiment showing an 11.2 percent growth
in activation rates for one customer segment, driven purely by three consecutive mobile
text nudges over a one-month period.
An account utilization campaign was launched to coincide with National Savings
month in July 2019 and to promote awareness and usage of the GoalSave feature
bundled with the transactional account. The campaign launched with the release of a
commissioned research study, “More Month than Money,” which focused on when
and why average South Africans go broke before the end of the month. The campaign
then rolled out a rich, emotional tapestry of personal stories, one released every day for
the next 31 days, all narrated by real South Africans, explaining the challenges they
faced to make it through each month, and why they were ‘broke by’ that particular day
of the month. In addition to receiving extensive PR coverage, broader brand awareness
and heightened brand engagement on the bank’s social media channels, the campaign
resulted in a 20 percent lift in GoalSave deposit values, and a 10 percent lift in volumes,
in July and the first part of August 2019.
DECIDING ABOUT THE NEXT FOUR MONTHS

Mazinter felt strong pressure from the business to increase account activation and
usage rates, with some arguing that she should redirect the remaining brand budget
towards performance marketing tactics. Choosing this approach would mean using a
series of promotional campaigns to drive increased account activity among existing
customers. Mazinter wondered whether a six-month-old brand needed additional
support and investment to sustain the emotional resonance it had created in the market,
and ensure sustainable value creation for the business in the long-term.
Mazinter’s campaign options for the period from September to December 2019
included a number of proposed communication components across three specific
offers. A ‘Win back your monthly spend!’ offer was designed to trial a standalone, single
mobile text channel, performance-driven promotion, without brand support, that
hoped to increase account utilization among different customer segments. For
example, customers who were yet to make a deposit would receive a promotional text
that they could win back their September spend if they transacted 5 times in the month.
A second offer, ‘Win your share of R1 million!’, proposed using a multi-channel
blended brand and performance approach, including mobile text and email marketing,
paid digital, social and search, in-store retail point of sale, commuter media, and
promotional partnerships with several regional radio stations. This offer was designed
to primarily drive account utilization, churn reduction, and account reactivation, with
a secondary objective of driving new customer acquisition. The campaign’s core
message was: ‘Use your TymeBank account 5x this month for the chance to win your
share of R1 million,’ and would be supported in market by the best performing brand
creative content. An additional campaign message to celebrate reaching 1 million
customers, build further brand affinity and credibility, and drive further customer
acquisition and activation, had been designed. The potential components being
considered for this message included paid digital, social and search, and stronger radio
and commuter media spend. The budget for the overall campaign period was expected
to be just less than half of the March - May 2019 ATL spend, and a decision needed to
be made on how best to allocate the spend across some or all of the three offers.
TymeBank planned a series of product trials for the last few months of 2019. The
bank was scheduled to introduce a basic transactional Business Account targeted at
sole proprietors and micro-enterprises, as well as a Personal Loan product.
TymeBank’s in-house data science and analytics capabilities allowed the new bank to
design an unsecured personal loan offering for customers who had either no credit
history or very thin credit files at the country’s top national credit bureau. It did this by
overlaying the bank’s retail partners’ transactional data on top of their own customer
data to make more inclusive credit-granting decisions while carefully managing risk.
TymeBank also planned a pilot project in December 2019 to offer a co-branded version
of its bank account to a small group of elders of the Zion Christian Church, which was
the largest local church in Southern Africa with approximately 12 million members.
TymeBank’s long-standing competitors had begun to reduce prices on their low-
cost accounts, promote new digital services and actively target consumer segments that
were now banking with TymeBank. Mazinter also knew that other digital banks like
Discovery Bank and Bank Zero were close on its heels. Discovery Bank was based on
its Vitality loyalty system, which incentivized behavioral change with respect to
spending less than one earns, having insurance, saving for emergencies and retirement,
and correctly managing secured debt. In January 2020, Discovery Limited’s 1,300 in-
house agents and 4,500 independent financial advisers, were expected to start
supporting increased customer acquisition, including migrating more of the business’
300,000 credit card users whose accounts were managed by First National bank.36
International research found that the average investment split between longer-term
brand marketing and shorter-term performance marketing to activate sales had
dropped to 50-50, with the London Business School’s Patrick Barwise arguing that this
trend was “destroying shareholder value by underinvesting in brand advertising.”37
Another advertising study of the underlying drivers of short-termism pointed to
increasingly short tenures of Marketing Directors, short-term performance-based
bonus schemes, a focus on quantification through online attribution models, and a
priority on cost in procurement processes.38
With some in the business believing that the brand had now been built, and that
TymeBank should shift primarily to performance marketing, scaling back on its multi-
channel, blended brand and performance approach, Mazinter needed to quickly
consider the potential returns of her proposed campaign strategy. Could she afford to
upweight her focus on performance marketing by redirecting funds from her brand
advertising budget? Would a series of digital and mobile performance-only focused
campaigns be sufficient to achieve the business’s objectives for the end of 2019?
Exhibit 1 - Service footprint and pricing comparison with industry competitors at launch
Source: TymeBank
Exhibit 2 - TymeBank customer value proposition
Source: TymeBank Investor Day Presentations, February 2019
Exhibit 3: Selection of TymeBank brand, performance, and in-store creative executions39
Brand executions
Performance executions
In-store Point of Sale executions

Source: TymeBank
Exhibit 4 - Above-the-line media spend in the banking sector
Source: TymeBank
Exhibit 5 - Average digital marketing conversion rates within the first six
months.
Digital marketing channel Conversion rate of account origination

Industry TymeBank
benchmark performance
Social media 3-4% 8.15%
Content marketing 2-3% 5.47%
Paid search 3-4% 5.30%
Organic search 3-4% 4.43%
Direct 1-2% 3.03%
Display 0.5-1% 2.79%
Source: TymeBank
Exhibit 6 - TymeBank customer lifecycle management strategy and selected results
Source: TymeBank
NOTES
1Meyer, M. (1994). Culture Club. Newsweek. Retrieved from
https://www.newsweek.com/culture-club-189982.
2Shapshak, T. (2018, November 14). South Africa’s Biggest Medical Aid Discovery
Launches ‘First Behavioural Bank’. Forbes. Retrieved from
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tobyshapshak/2018/11/14/south-africas-biggest-
medical-aid-discovery-launches-first-behavioural-bank/#915eb297900c.
3 Gluyas, R. (2016, October 20). CBA to disrupt banking in SAfrica, India, China,
Indon. The Australian. Retrieved from https://www.theaustralian.com.au/cba-to-
disrupt-banking-in-safrica-india-china-indonesia/news-
story/5f60d0c2caa67b04453496f8698da086.
4BusinessTech. (2017, January 30). SA branchless bank signing up 5,000 customers
every week. Retrieved from https://businesstech.co.za/news/mobile/153815/sa-
branchless-bank-signing-up-5000-customers-every-week/.
5African Rainbow Capital. (2018, August 8). African Rainbow Capital to become
100% owner of TymeDigital. Retrieved from
http://www.africanrainbowcapital.co.za/press-release/african-rainbow-capital-to-
become-100-owner-of-tymedigital.html.
6 Chironga, M., Cunha, L., De Grandis, H., & Kuyoro, M. (2018). Roaring to life:
Growth and innovation in African retail banking. McKinsey & Company. Retrieved
from
https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Industries/Financial%20Services/
Our%20Insights/African%20retail%20bankings%20next%20growth%20frontier/Ro
aring-to-life-growth-and-innovation-in-African-retail-banking-web-final.ashx.
7Statistics South Africa. (2019). Youth graduate unemployment rate increases in Q1:
2019. Retrieved from http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=12121
8Kessler, K., Ikdal, A., Naidoo, E., Portafaix, A., Hendrickson, J., Boje, A., and
Rabec, D. (2017). Improving Financial Inclusion in South Africa. Boston Consulting
Group. Retrieved from https://www.bcg.com/en-
gb/publications/2017/globalization-improving-financial-inclusion-south-africa.aspx
9FinMark Trust. (2016). FinScope South Africa 2016. Retrieved from
http://finmark.org.za/finscope-consumer-survey-south-africa-2016/
10Whiting, K. (2019). South Africa’s economy in 5 charts. World Economic Forum.
Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/05/south-africas-
economy-in-5-charts/.
11The World Bank. (2021). Data for South Africa, Upper middle income. Retrieved
from https://data.worldbank.org/?locations=ZA-XT.
12Pitjeng, R. (2018). Capitec Bank now the largest bank in SA, survey finds. EWN.
Retrieved from https://ewn.co.za/2018/05/08/capitec-bank-now-the-largest-bank-
in-sa-survey-finds.
14 Mastercard. (2017, May 3). Cash costs South African consumers R23 billion a year
– Mastercard study. Retrieved from https://newsroom.mastercard.com/mea/press-
releases/cash-costs-south-african-consumers-r23-billion-a-year-mastercard-study
15 Mastercard. (2017, May 3). Cash costs South African consumers R23 billion a year
– Mastercard study. Retrieved from https://newsroom.mastercard.com/mea/press-
releases/cash-costs-south-african-consumers-r23-billion-a-year-mastercard-study
18FinMark Trust. (2018). FinScope South Africa consumer 2018 results factsheet.
Retrieved from http://finmark.org.za/finscope-south-africa-consumer-2018-results-
factsheet/
21World Bank Group. (2020). Databank: South Africa. Retrieved from
https://data.worldbank.org/country/south-africa
22 Tarrant, H. (2016, March 30). How the big banks’ ATM networks stack up. Tech
Central. Retrieved from https://techcentral.co.za/how-the-big-banks-atm-networks-
stack-up/64140/
23World Bank Group. (2018). South Africa: Retail banking diagnostic. Retrieved
from
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/732111536246467778/pdf/129778-
WP-South-Africa-Retail-Banking-Diagnostic-Report.pdf
24Norbrook, N. (2018). Top 200 Banks: 2018 Review. The Africa Report. Retrieved
from https://www.theafricareport.com/free-pdf/top-200-banks-2018.
25Vermeulen, F. (2018). How Capitec become South Africa’s biggest bank. Harvard
Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2018/10/how-capitec-became-
south-africas-biggest-bank.
26Camarate, J., & Maritz, C. (2018). A marketplace without boundaries 2.0: Digital
disruption in the South African banking sector. PwC. Retrieved from
https://www.pwc.co.za/en/assets/pdf/strategyand-digital-disruption-in-sa-banking-
sector.pdf.
27EY. (2016). Customer trust: without it, you’re just another bank. Retrieved from
https://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/ey-trust-without-it-youre-just-
another-bank/$FILE/ey-trust-without-it-youre-just-another-bank.pdf.
from
29Ipsos. (2018, November 16). Survey: Most influential brands in South Africa.
Retrieved from https://www.ipsos.com/en-za/survey-most-influential-brands-south-
africa
from
31Demand Metric Research Corporation. (2019). Multichannel Marketing:
Maximizing program engagement and ROI. Retrieved from
https://www.pfl.com/images/2019-Multichannel-Marketing-Report.pdf.
32Challier, A., & Pugh, N. (2018). Part one: The short-term impact of advertising.
Profit Ability: The business case for advertising. Retrieved from
https://www.gaintheory.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Profit-Ability-The-
Business-Case-For-Advertising-2018-Full-Report.pdf.
33Chappell, M. (2018). Part two: The long-term impact of advertising. Profit Ability:
The business case for advertising. Retrieved from https://www.gaintheory.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/12/Profit-Ability-The-Business-Case-For-Advertising-2018-
Full-Report.pdf.
34African Rainbow Capital. (2019). TymeBank Investor Day Presentations. Retrieved
from http://www.arci.mu/TymeBank-Booklet-and-Investor-Day-Full-Slide-
Deck.pdf.
35Barwise, P. (2018). Foreword: Maximising the net present value of advertising.
36Buthelezi, L. (2020, February 20). Discovery Bank: How far has it come? Fin24.
Retrieved from https://www.news24.com/fin24/companies/financial-
services/discovery-bank-how-far-has-it-come-20200221.
37Barwise, P. (2018). Foreword: Maximising the net present value of advertising.
38Hill, M. (2018). Introduction. Profit Ability: The business case for advertising.
Retrieved from https://www.gaintheory.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Profit-
Ability-The-Business-Case-For-Advertising-2018-Full-Report.pdf.
39The TymeBank brand launch TV commercial is available at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ62YFiEBjg and the creative executions of
the #BrokeBy campaign are available at
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe2AVKEAa6l_MNY2hEI_6sVTtcBcOV
R6e.
REFERENCES
aDiscovery Bank and Discovery Limited are a different entity to Discover Financial
Services and the Discover Card, based in Chicago, Illinois.

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TymeBank in 2019: Chasing the Millions

“Banks are dinosaurs.” - Bill Gates, 19941

TymeBank in 2019: Chasing the Millions 1

THE BIRTH OF TYME

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THE FIRST SIX MONTHS

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DECIDING ABOUT THE NEXT FOUR MONTHS

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Source: TymeBank Investor Day Presentations, February 2019

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In-store Point of Sale executions

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Digital marketing channel Conversion rate of account origination

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