thesis submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Johannesburg, August 2015 / Financial inclusion is promoted as an important economic development program to solve the lack of access to formal financial services for billions of people around the world. The concept “financial inclusion” has entered mainstream business and development discourses as an all-encompassing term for innovation in financial services for the poor. South African policymakers and financial service providers have embraced this approach to address some of the country’s political, social and economic imbalances. A number of examples are held up as successes of financial inclusion such as India’s “Jan Dhan Yojana” initiative. The program, launched in August 2014, signed up 75 million people to new bank accounts in under three months. South African policymakers and financial service providers have also embraced financial inclusion to address the country’s political, social and economic imbalances. Several consequences challenge this optimistic view. The first issue is the high level of dormancy across various services. India’s account has up to 75% dormancy, much like South Africa’s Mzansi account launched expressly for financial inclusion in 2005. It was abandoned by 2012 due to lack of use. The second major issue is adverse inclusion that arises after people are “financially included” and they end up worse off than before. In August 2014 African Bank, the largest lender to low-income individuals in South Africa, failed because it had issued loans to customers who eventually could not afford to repay them. Despite these issues, the focus of financial inclusion remains on targets of density, penetration and geographic access as measured in the World Bank’s Findex, a global financial inclusion database. Practitioners and researchers tend to be concerned with how people as borrowers, savers, bank account users and mobile phone users access and use financial services. Yet an unexplored issue is how these subject positions came to be, how they are maintained and the specific rationalities that accompany them. Following Foucault, this study is an attempt to understand how the concept of financial inclusion has functioned in our society to create human beings as subjects. This is a seven-year genealogical research project of South Africa’s national financial inclusion effort. Over this period, three discourse clusters were identified and analysed. The first cluster consists of 12 texts produced by a range of public, private and civil society institutions. The second cluster of academic discourses on financial inclusion consists of 3 83 peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2009 and 2013. The third cluster is a collection of texts from local sources in two townships produced by those individuals who are often the subjects in the other discourse clusters. The analysis reveals dominant modes of objectification in each cluster and the synthesis enables the search for evidence of a regime of truth on financial inclusion. Evidence indicates that dominant discourses of financial inclusion, irrespective of origin, limit subjects to existing practices of money management. Therefore, despite claims of the sweeping changes that can result from financial inclusion, this study argues that this form of development discourse perpetuates existing concentrations of wealth. Counter-narratives that link financial inclusion and asset building offer an important break in this dominance / MT2016

M.Tech. Business Administration (MBA)

Brands represent invaluable intangible assets of ftrms and therefore need to be nurtured like tangible assets. Leading authors such as Sampson (1998) argue that Fortune 500 benchmark companies such as Coca Cola, BP and American Express have intangible assets accounting for a large percentage of their stock market value. Major banks around the world are competing in a commoditised market where differentiation is proving to be difftcult. Having the best processes and best products is no longer a guarantee for competitive advantage as competitors are likely to copy same. For a bank to have a sustainable competitive advantage in a commoditised market, it needs to use its brand as a contemporary weapon of market choice. Authors such as Grinden (1999) argue that this makes sense as no competitor bank can ever copy another bank's brand. Banks need to take their brands seriously and manage them as if they were managing newly granted loans. Authors such as Haque et al (1994) argue that banks need to realise that the values that make up the brand exist because they are perceived by customers and other stakeholders. Customers will evaluate these values positively or negatively. These evaluations are simply a brand image. Marketing is not about products or services, it is about perceptions. A bank should accept that a customer's perception about its image need not be a fact; it could be right or wrong. A customer will hold an opinion and his or her perception may determine the purchasing decision. As part of the study a literature review was done on brand and branding. Constructs were built based on the strength of literature review on branding and were mainly based on the conceptual model developed by Keller (1993). The aim of the research is to solve the business problem statement, namely: A multi-brand bank such as Nedbank believes provinces and single brands are not related and a single bank such as ABSA believes they are related. Using Chi-Square tests the researcher accepted the null hypothesis (Ho) and rejected alternative hypothesis (Ha) for the three branding variables tested, namely: Top-of-mind awareness, brand trust and brand loyalty. Sample coefftcient of correlation shows a positive relationship between these three variables. / Thesis, (MBA)-University of Natal, 2003.

M.Comm. / Warren Buffet, regarded as one of the world's leading investors said (Lowe, 1997:99): "Price is what you pay. Value is what you get." The world and South Africa have seen significant mergers in the financial services industry over the past ten years. Valuation models and results have been extensively debated, but to understand the true value of any company one has to analyse the underlying factors impacting the value. This valuation process can play an important role to determine what the impact of changes in the key ratios of a bank on the value of a bank will be. The main purpose of this study was to develop a valuation model for banks based on key ratios commonly used in banks' financial statements that would enable the quantification of the impact of changes in key ratios on the value of a bank. A literature study of available valuation methods were done to determine valuation theories on which the model could be based. Specific factors relating to valuation of banks were investigated. Key ratios were identified based on analysis of financial statements of banks and banking legislation requirements. A valuation model was developed based on these ratios. A prediction of future key ratios of the four main South African banks were obtained from three analysts and the valuation model tested by comparing the calculated value to the quoted market prices. Changes of 1% were made to key ratios and the impact on the value of each bank determined.

A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Communication Science at the University of Zululand, South Africa, 2012. / Relationship in banking has become very competitive in the recent past, more especially in the aftermath of the recent global economic meltdown. Most of the major banks in South Africa are not only striving to improve the quality and quantity of their clientele but also to maintain their survival in the corporate market. Most relationship in banks focus on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, however, the issue of language barrier is being neglected in many banking halls. South Africa hosts eleven official languages and it is obviously not feasible for one particular bank to embrace all these languages for customer service, however, there can be varied strategies for individual banks to cater for clients in specific locations. This thesis examines how particular banks cater for the language needs of its immediate community. The primary goal of this study is to examine the current quality of service offered by the banking sector in South Africa especially in terms of service delivery proposed by the banking code of practice (ABSA COBP).The clients and staff of a bank in Zululand (KwaZulu-Natal) provided valuable information for this study. The data was collected through the use of structured interviews of clients and staff members. The study is informative and insightful in that it infiltrates the responsibilities policy makers in communicating with clients. Furthermore, the study exposes provocative and controversial issues in communication policy and hopes to stir awareness within the banking sector to improve relationship banking. This ground-breaking study also demonstrates how challenges faced by the clients cause banks to fail to meet its intended purpose. This study also exposes provocative and controversial challenges which place our banking sector at risk of total annihilation if left unattended. The study speaks to issues of accountability such as: planning and decision making and the plight of the people of our nation.

LL.M. / Please refer to full text to view abstract

University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg A proposal for a research report to be submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Commerce / Value-Added Tax (VAT) on imported services in South Africa and the VAT treatment of banking income / products has been a contentious issue for a number of years in South Africa. South African companies, individual taxpayers, students and the South African Revenue Service (SARS) have difficulty to interpret whether section 7(1)(c) and section 14 of the Value-Added Tax Act No. 89 of 1991 is applicable to certain transactions. The aim of the study is to discuss and analyse VAT on imported services in South Africa in order for an individual taxpayer, company and SARS to understand which section should be applied to a certain transaction. This study also aims at clearly showing the type of income / products generated in the banking industry and how VAT is treated on the types of income / products in the bank. This will give students, tax professionals in the financial industry, auditors, companies, individuals and the SARS a better understanding of how VAT is treated in the financial industry. / MT2017

Thesis (M.Com. (Economics & Economic History)) - Rhodes University, 2006. / A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Masters of Commerce in Financial Markets.

LL.M. (Banking Law) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

This research provides an historical, theoretical and practical appraisal of exogenous and endogenous money and money creation, with South Africa as the focus of the practical investigation. Monetary theory of recent decades can be categorised as belonging to one of two distinct paradigms: mainstream (neoclassical) or post Keynesian. The mainstream (orthodox) view presents a Euclidian or Cartesian, ergodic, deductive, and axiomatic theoretical interpretation of the world. This is perpetuated through the continued, and inaccurate, depiction in academia of exogenous money creation, the money multiplier concept, asset transformation by banks, imposed alterations to the money stock by central banks and long-run closed system equilibrium models (and associated homogeneity, and long term behavioural assumptions). In the real world, economic agents, structures, institutions and their interrelations are perpetually evolving. The post Keynesian paradigm provides the theoretical framework within which to understand such a world. Unfortunately the necessity for a multiplicity of methods and methodology makes it a paradigm that is currently prohibitively complex, preventing simple exposition. Money creation should, both historically, and according to the analysis conducted, be defined according to the actual source of change in the money stock, that is, credit extension. In a nonergodic world, changes in the stock of money take on a causal role with regard the initiation of productive processes, and thus influence future economic conditions. The simple, although powerful, technique of balance sheet analysis conducted herein provides a detailed method of identification of causal changes in money stock. Within the context of the institutional and structural environment, it clearly demonstrates the residual nature of money m modern economies. This research serves to emphasise the importance of monetary matters for economic management, as well as the important difference between the money creation process and the residual deposit securities. It serves also to discourage the perpetuation of fallacies of money creation, and capabilities of monetary authorities. In South Africa, as in most countries, the central bank can influence the conditions under which borrowers and banks mutually create money, but do not themselves create or distribute money beyond the facilitation of credit extension by banks