This report highlights the crucial role of banks in driving intra-African trade, facilitating capital flows, and deepening economic integration across the continent. The study unpacks systemic and banking-specific challenges such as regulatory fragmentation, currency volatility, limited correspondent banking networks, infrastructure deficits, and stringent compliance requirements. These barriers increase the cost and risk of cross-border operations. However, within these challenges lie significant opportunities for banks that move early and strategically, particularly in trade finance, structured lending, digital payments, and SME-focused financial solutions.

The small, micro and medium enterprises have become a national focus area in South Africa, with many state and private institutions wanting to understand this complex ecosystem. Access to finance has been a popular narrative for the lack of growth of this sector, but it has many friction points that all contribute to the current state of SME development.

With both a health crisis and a mobility crisis, caused by the restrictions of a National State of Disaster, the financial sector adapted their contingency plans for a financial crisis, to place the customer at the centre while rapidly shifting to a work from home environment for everyone, never anticipated by a highly regulated and conservative sector. This research covers the impact of Covid-19 on the financial sector in South Africa.