African banks are spending more on artificial intelligence than they can account for. In The State of AI in African Banking 2026, a survey of 277 senior banking executives across 37 countries by the software company Backbase and African Banker magazine, 83.2% said they expect to increase AI investment. Only 67.1% measure the return on that investment at all.
TechCabal revisited the findings on 22 October, setting them against what South Africa's largest lenders have disclosed.
What the banks report
- Standard Bank: loan documentation in commercial asset finance fell from about an hour to about 60 seconds; conversational AI handles 65% of digital queries in its personal banking app
- Standard Bank: more than 39,000 staff were active users of generative AI by August
- Nedbank: 30 advanced AI use cases in 2025 and about 312,000 employee hours saved, according to its integrated report
- Nedbank: about R375 million unlocked by AI, automation and digital banking, it said in August
Saved time becomes money only when it turns into costs avoided or extra income, TechCabal argues. Standard Bank says it will redirect staff time to customer relationships. Its bad-loan ratio fell to 5.6% at the end of June from 6.2% a year earlier, but the bank has not attributed that to AI.
Why measuring is hard
Legacy systems top every barrier list: 50.2% of respondents named integration with existing systems as their biggest internal obstacle. Cloud bills and software are often priced in dollars, so a weaker local currency raises the cost. Standard Bank alone spent R23.5 billion on technology in 2025, 27.7% of its operating expenses.
The survey also shows who is not measuring. C-suite leaders track AI returns at half the rate of finance teams, 50% against 82%. Pan-African banks measure at the lowest rate, 54.2%, while regional banks measure at 90.9%, Backbase says.
