* South Africa's biggest banks face growing competition for

large corporate clients

* Look to win more clients from once ignored medium-sized

companies

* Nedbank, Investec create dedicated teams and services

* Standard Bank eyes expansion in East and West Africa

By Nqobile Dludla

JOHANNESBURG, June 11 (Reuters) - In the glass-walled

boardrooms of South Africa's biggest banks, executives are

ramping up efforts to win clients from a once overlooked

corporate segment: medium-sized companies that are now too

lucrative to ignore.

Faced with growing competition for large corporates and

squeezed retail banking margins in a sluggish economy, lenders

including Nedbank, Investec, FirstRand's

First National Bank and Standard Bank are

targeting the sector with dedicated teams and tailored services.

This market, companies with annual revenue of 100 million

rand to around 1.5 billion rand ($6 million to $91 million),

spans sectors from manufacturing and mining services to

agriculture, retail and logistics. Bank executives say these

businesses are often cash-rich, fast-growing and steadier and

provide more attractive returns than more volatile retail and

small business portfolios.

"This is a strategic growth vector for Nedbank. We're

scaling the operation," Marlon Davids, the head of mid-corporate

coverage at Nedbank's Business and Commercial Banking unit, told

Reuters.

NEDBANK AND INVESTEC RAISE THE STAKES

Nedbank has created a mid-corporate unit with its own credit

committees and commercial bankers targeting up to 30% of South

Africa's estimated 3,000 to 3,500 medium-sized companies

generating annual revenue of at least 750 million rand, Davids

said.

The country's fourth-largest bank by assets plans to triple the

unit's banker headcount to about 30 from 10, while its client

base has already grown 50% since its launch last year.

Investec, a specialist private bank, says banks serving

medium-sized companies are generating returns on equity of

around 30%, roughly double those of most major lenders.

The sector is dominated by privately or family-owned

businesses, often with substantial cash balances looking for a

home and transactional banking services.

To tap into that, Investec plans to more than double its

mid-corporate client base to 7,000 by 2030, and raise annual

revenue from the segment to 3.8 billion rand from 1.7 billion in

2025, said Nick Riley, head of business and commercial banking

at Investec.

The bank has invested more than 300 million rand to set up

full banking services which it plans to roll out before March

2027, Riley said.

Investec lacked the full day-to-day transactional banking

capabilities needed to compete with larger rivals for

medium-sized corporate clients.

"In South Africa, we continue to see good client acquisition

momentum. We're starting to see the flywheel really gather

momentum," Investec Group Chief Executive Fani Titi told

reporters in May.

FNB, which says it already serves over 20,000 medium-sized

companies, combined its mid- and large corporate clients units

into a single division in March, allowing it to sell more

sophisticated banking products to fast-growing firms.

STANDARD BANK LOOKING ACROSS AFRICA

For Standard Bank, Africa's largest lender by assets which has

an around 28% share of South Africa's mid-corporate market, the

opportunities extend beyond the continent's most industrialised

economy.

The bank sees growth prospects in East and West Africa,

where its market share remains below 10%, Bill Blackie, its

chief executive of Business and Commercial Banking said at the

bank's March capital markets day.

It estimates that Africa's mid-corporate segment represents

a potential revenue pool of 150 billion rand, with 85% of that

in South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

"Today our customers trade more across the continent than

they do with any other single trade bloc, be it China or the

U.S.," Blackie told Reuters.

"We're seeing very high growth rates coming out of those

economies."

The bank is targeting lending growth of about 10% and

deposits above 725 billion rand by 2028 in its business and

commercial banking division, up from 514 billion rand in 2025.

The intensifying competition is likely to benefit

medium-sized companies, analysts said.

"More options should lead to better service levels, more

tailored funding solutions and, in some cases, better pricing,"

said Keagan Higgins, an investment analyst at Anchor Capital, a

boutique wealth and asset management firm.

($1 = 16.4983 rand)

(Reporting by Nqobile Dludla; Editing by Bate Felix and Emelia

Sithole-Matarise)