The re-entry into Namibia by South Africa's biggest retail bank, ABSA, is expected to shake the local banking market currently dominated by Standard Bank, Nedbank, FNB and Bank Windhoek, a senior treasury official told the Economist this week. ABSA has been granted a provisional banking licence by the Bank of Namibia. The Economist established that the bank has already dispatched a team into Namibia to prepare for the bank's roll out.

“I don't think it will be business as usual. The banks have to think hard and strategise,” said the official, who did not want to be named because of his involvement in the granting of the licence.
The ABSA Group confirmed this week; almost two months after the Economist broke the story, that the company was entering the local market with the Barclays Bank.
“We can confirm that the Bank of Namibia has granted a provisional banking license to Absa. This is the first step in pursuing the possibility of entering the Namibian banking market,” Maxwell Pirikisi, Head of Corporate Affairs at ABSA Africa, told the Economist from Johanneburg.