SARB bought African Bank shares to save the bank from collapsing after it and its parent company, African Bank Investment Limited, was placed under curatorship in 2014 due to spiralling bad debt. SARB said from the beginning that as a central bank, it was not its intention to hold to the African Bank stake over a long time. For African Bank to come out of curatorship and trade again, SARB, together with the Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF) and a consortium of local banks made up of FirstRand Bank, Standard Bank, ABSA, Nedbank, Capitec and Investec injected R10bn to African Bank and SARB also provided R7bn buying the bank's bad loan book.