Challenger firms, for example providing payments services, often specialise in one service meaning they can be more agile and responsive to customer needs in that area. This is putting increasing pressure on banks to improve their digital offerings and changing their approach to engaging with their customers.
Looking at a dozen or so large and open emerging economies with an inflationtargeting regime, we find that the sample’s median GDP growth (since the adoption of the regime) has been about 0.5 percentage points higher than South Africa’s whereas its inflation rate has been about 2.0 percentage points lower.