Capitec and Standard Bank beat Nedbank, FNB, and Absa

The latest PressPulse rankings show that Capitec and Standard Bank received much better media coverage than their main competitors, Nedbank, FNB, and Absa.

PressPulse is an online media-sentiment tracking platform that developed a custom artificial intelligence (AI) sentiment-measuring system.

The system uses sophisticated natural language processing and deep learning for accurate sentiment detection.

It focuses on South African business reporting from top-tier publications and measures companies’ success in achieving positive exposure.

The sentiment ranking is based on the number of positive, neutral, or negative articles and the reach and influence of the publication where they are published.

Simply put, the more positive articles a company receives, the better its sentiment ranking. It also accounts for the reach of each article.

Each company is assigned a sentiment score, which reflects its performance. A positive score shows positive exposure, while a negative score shows negative exposure.

The size of the score indicates the impact of the exposure. A big positive score, for example, shows that a company enjoyed highly impactful positive exposure.

Press Pulse’s sentiment analysis for South Africa’s entertainment platforms showed that Capitec and Standard Bank topped the rankings.

Capitec received a positive sentiment score of 173, and Standard Bank achieved a positive score of 165.

These high positive sentiment scores indicate effective marketing and media strategies employed by Capitec and Standard Bank.

These two banks achieved much higher scores than the other three large banks in South Africa, Nedbank, FNB, and Absa.

Nedbank and FNB had the same sentiment score, 64, while Absa ranked the lowest with a score of 15.

Absa’s poor performance is unsurprising. Over the last year, it faced numerous challenges, including leadership turmoil and operational hiccups.

It reached such concerning levels that the bank acknowledged internal governance issues and damaged stakeholder trust.

Media sentiment score of South Africa’s large banks

The table and chart below provide an overview of Capitec, Standard Bank, Nedbank, FNB, and Absa’s media sentiment scores.