The story
The FirstRand group's history traces back to the 1970s as an investment bank. The group as currently was established on 1 April 1998, through a merger of the financial services interests of Anglo American Corporation of South Africa Limited (now Anglo American plc) and RMB Holdings (RMBH) in order to achieve the objective of a unified financial services grouping.
These financial services interests were First National Bank Holdings, Momentum Life Assurers Limited (Momentum, now part of MMI Holdings) and the Southern Life Association Limited (Southern Life), all of which were listed on the JSE. FNB and Southern Life were constituted as wholly owned subsidiaries of Momentum, which was the vehicle to affect the merger. Momentum changed its name to FirstRand Limited and was listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange on 25 May 1998, with Anglo American and RMB Holdings holding 20.43% and 25.03% of the authorised capital of FirstRand respectively. Anglo American has since shed its entire shareholding.
Post-merger events saw the merging of Rand Merchant Bank and FNB to form FirstRand Bank Limited, with the two units remaining to trade as divisions of FirstRand Bank Limited, and the transfer of Momentum's insurance business into that of Southern Life, to form FirstRand Insurance Limited.
FirstRand is listed as a "locally controlled bank" by the South African Reserve Bank, the national banking regulator. The group has subsidiaries in South Africa and in Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Lesotho, Tanzania, Ghana, Zambia, Nigeria and the UK.
In November 2012, the Central Bank of Nigeria issued the first merchant banking licences in more than a decade to RMB Nigeria and another local firm.
In July 2022, First National Bank of Tanzania was officially acquired by Exim Bank Tanzania.
In 2024, a UK court ruled against Close Brothers Group and FirstRand for mis-selling loans to car buyers. They had been paying commission to car dealers for recommending their loans, without the dealers revealing the commissions to the car buyers. FirstRand disagreed with the court's findings.
In October 2025, FirstRand officially took over the assets and customers of HSBC's South African branch.
From Wikipedia’s article on FirstRand, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5