About First National Bank:

First National Bank (FNB) is the oldest bank in South Africa and services retail and commercial customers and the broader African continent with operations in Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Zambia, Mozambique, and Ghana. FNB is growing its franchise strongly in both existing and new markets on the back of a compelling customer offering that provides a broad range of innovative financial services products and services, across its transactional, lend, insure, and invest business.

About The Program

We offer a range of solutions for our female-led businesses to help them at every stage of their business and life-cycle journey. Our product set is inclusive of banking products such as lending options as well as transactional, investment, insurance and fiduciary offerings.  We recognize that our clients’ needs are different and diverse. We package offerings that are tailored to their unique needs, leveraging off the extensive product suite we have available to our clients.

Apart from offering financial support, we also take a holistic view of the customer, and also offer non-financial support to help them start, run, and grow their businesses.

*Education – we provide access to Enterprise Supplier Development programs that help to develop entrepreneurs as well as conduct various financial literacy programs to our female-led base to upskill them and provide the necessary information at the right stage of their businesses. We also leverage our FUNDABA educational content platform which is available on the FNB App for women to upskill themselves in order to start, run and grow their businesses.  

*Access to markets – to provide a greater scope for our ladies to gain access to new markets, we provide platforms for them to meet new potential suppliers and clients via events we host, podcasts and digital media elements. We further showcase them through sponsorships we collaborate on and manage. We also have a specific women-owned business badge on our digital marketplace which identifies those businesses as women-owned so that anyone engaging on our platform knows they are buying from a women-owned business, and it is also a great marketing tool for our clients. 

*Access to networks – we create events and opportunities for women to connect, share and engage via the various events and sponsorships/collaborations and organizations we work with and always use women-led businesses as vendors, speakers, and collaborators to help showcase them and their businesses. 

*Sponsorships – we are intentional about the organizations we work with to help grow, support, and encourage women-owned businesses in every stage of their life journey and it’s not just about financial support. 

*CARE – through our CARE teams we offer the ability to give back and contribute to the society in which our female-led businesses operate. Examples are GBV homes where we provide GBV kits and financial literacy training, Early Childhood Development centers where we help with education and sustaining the creches, and various other initiatives that all contribute to community sustainability.