Wesbank: South Africa’s Leading Hire Purchase Bank, 1968–90

Wesbank is a hire purchase bank that grew up on the back of the automobile industry. Though its roots reach back into the 1890s, its real growth dates from the 1950s, when both the companies that came together to form Wesbank in 1968 began to finance the sale of motor vehicles. The 1950s were a time of rapid growth in the motor industry, the time when car-ownership became normal among the White section of the population — thirty years behind the United States, but ten years ahead of the United Kingdom. It was the enterprise of the Schlesinger Organisation and of the Sanger family that led to the dynamic growth of Wesbank’s original constituent parts and to the appearance on the South African financial scene of a new type of financial institution.