Investec Bank named overall winner of the 2026/27 Ask Africa Orange Index

Investec Bank has been named the overall winner of the 2026/27 Ask Africa Orange Index™, achieving the highest customer experience ranking across all 219 brands and 27 industries measured in this year’s benchmark.

The announcement was made at the final event of the 2026 Ask Africa CX Intelligence Forum, concluding three days of customer experience insights and category winner announcements across Everyday Life & Retail Spend, Connected & On the Move, and Finance, Protection & Health. Investec Bank first secured the 2026/27 Private Banking category title before going on to achieve the highest overall position in the national benchmark.

The result is particularly significant in a year characterised by substantial movement in customer experience leadership. Eighteen of the 27 category titles changed hands, only nine previous winners retained their positions, and nine brands became category winners for the first time. Investec Bank itself is a first-time winner of the Private Banking category.

Dr Sarina Howie, chief data and analytics officer at Ask Africa, said the result demonstrates why customer experience leadership needs to be understood beyond the boundaries of an individual industry. “Most organisations naturally compare themselves with their direct competitors, however customers have a much wider frame of reference. The experience they receive from a bank influences what they expect from a retailer, an insurer, a telecommunications provider, or a healthcare organisation. To rank first across the entire Ask Africa Orange Index™ means setting a standard that extends beyond your own category.”

Unathi Boniwe, head of marketing at Investec Private Bank, said the recognition reflects the organisation’s long-term commitment to bespoke, personalised service that puts clients at the centre of every interaction

“Being recognised as the Overall Winner of the 2026/27 Ask Africa Orange Index™ is testament to our deep understanding of our clients, who they are and what is most valuable to them. This allows us to provide a level of service that is not only trusted in the industry, but sets our clients up for success along each step of their financial journey. Our long-standing culture of human connection, combined with an innovative approach to technology and problem solving, enables us to deliver exceptional client experiences every day.”

Private banking continues to set the CX benchmark

Investec Bank’s overall win sits within a broader pattern of sustained customer experience leadership from the private banking industry.

Private banking has now ranked as the leading industry in the Ask Africa Orange Index™ for four consecutive years, representing the longest uninterrupted period of industry leadership in the benchmark’s history. In 2026, private banking achieved a Perform score of 81.8 and a Feel score of 73.1, making it the only industry measured to score above 70 on both dimensions.

Five of the top ten brands nationally are private banks. The consistency of the category points to the growing importance of combining strong operational delivery with a customer relationship that feels personal, trusted, and responsive. Private banking has traditionally been built around understanding individual customers, providing access to people, and delivering greater levels of personalisation. Those characteristics are becoming increasingly relevant across industries as more routine customer interactions become automated and self-service driven.

Customer experience is about what happens and what remains

The Ask Africa Orange Index™ measures customer experience through two connected dimensions: Perform Factor® and Feel Factor®. The Perform Factor® considers what the organisation delivered, including competence, resolution, responsiveness, effort, and whether the business kept its promise. The Feel Factor® examines what customers are left with after the interaction, including trust, empathy, authenticity, compassion, and whether they felt understood.

The distinction is becoming increasingly important. Across the 2026/27 Ask Africa Orange Index™, 90% of customers say they are satisfied with the service they receive, while only 48% say they are delighted. That gap suggests that delivering an acceptable experience is widespread, while creating an experience that customers genuinely value remains considerably more difficult.

“Customer satisfaction can tell an organisation that an interaction went reasonably well, but it does not necessarily tell you whether the relationship became stronger,” Howie said. “The leaders are increasingly finding ways to combine operational excellence with an emotional experience that builds confidence in the organisation over time.” Private banking’s performance as the only industry scoring above 70 on both the Perform- and Feel Factor®, provides a clear example of that combination.

The difference between a good experience and a memorable one

Trust emerges strongly across the 2026/27 findings. Sixteen of the 27 category winners rank highest for trust within their respective industries, while eight of the top ten industries record the highest trust scores in their categories.

For Investec Bank, the relationship between trust and customer experience carries particular relevance. Customers place their salaries, savings, investments, and long-term financial decisions in the hands of their bank, meaning the experience depends on confidence in both the organisation’s ability and its intent.

The same principle applies across industries. Customers need trust insurers to honour commitments when a claim is made. They need to trust healthcare providers when their wellbeing is at stake. They want to trust retailers to deliver what was promised, and telecommunications providers to keep them connected.

Every customer relationship contains a promise, whether explicit or implied. The experience customers receive determines whether they continue to believe that promise will be kept. “Trust is created through repeated experience,” Howie said. “It is built when organisations consistently do what they say they will do, resolve problems effectively, and make customers feel that their needs are understood. That is why it is so closely connected with the strongest performers in this year’s benchmark.”

Leading the market requires constant evolution

Perhaps one of the most important messages emerging from the 2026/27 Ask Africa Orange Index™ is that customer experience leadership cannot be assumed to continue from one year to the next.

With 18 of the 27 category titles changing hands, the results reflect a highly dynamic and competitive environment. A business can improve its own internal customer experience measures, while still losing ground against the market. Competitors may be improving faster. Another industry may be introducing experiences that change what customers expect. A level of service that once differentiated an organisation may gradually become the baseline.

That is the role of independent benchmarking: to provide context around holistic performance. The 2026/27 Ask Africa Orange Index™ is based on 54,182 interviews with South Africans who have actually dealt with the brands they rate, benchmarking 219 brands across 27 industries and measuring customer experience across 43 variables.

“Internal CX measures are important, but they tell leadership what is happening inside the organisation,” Howie said. “Benchmarking provides the macro context. It tells you where the customer experience standard is moving, who is setting it, and whether your own improvement is keeping pace.” For Investec Bank, that context places the organisation at the top of South Africa’s customer experience benchmark for 2026/27. For the wider market, its performance provides a new reference point for what customer experience leadership currently looks like.

“The purpose of the Ask Africa Orange Index™ has always extended beyond identifying a winner,” Howie added. “The real value lies in understanding what the leaders are doing differently, what customers are beginning to expect, and where organisations need to evolve next. Investec Bank has set the benchmark. The opportunity for every other business is to understand what that performance can teach them.”

The Ask Africa Orange Index™ is an independent customer experience benchmark established in 2001. Measuring over 200 brands, across 27 industries, including over 50,000 interviewees in South Africa, the benchmark covers emotional connectedness across service, complaints, product, brand, trust and loyalty.

Built for companies that are serious about their customers journey, the benchmark provides a roadmap for institutions to become customer experience leaders within their industry. The Ask Africa Orange Index™ is a part of Ask Africa’s holistic solution suite, aimed to guide industry leaders towards success, through credible, hyperlocal data intelligence and expert partnership.