Bank employees have been forecast to face lower pay, redeployment or job losses during 2016. Banks are believed to adopt this cost efficient measure, since staff cost is the single largest cost items for this portfolio, reports Bloomberg quoting Neelash Hansjee, bank analyst at Old Mutual PLC, a Cape Town based investment unit.

Barclays Africa, Nedbank and Standard Bank have been adopting technologies that may enable them to employ less staff, particularly for administrative functions. All these lenders have been investing in digital products to make those cheaper to bank and interact with customers.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has downgraded its growth forecast for Africa's most industrialized nation to 0.7% for this year. This will be the lowest growth since recession in 2009. However, the IMF prediction may downgrade South Africa's credit rating to junk status.

SARB has cut its growth forecast for 2016 to 0.9%, down from previous estimation of 1.5%, made at the Monetary Policy Committee's last meeting in November. But some economists predict even lower growth fearing further shocks centering the outright recession.

South African economy is tumbling with the weaker value of rand. The inflationary pressure has compelled the central bank to decide on interest rate hiking for the second time within a span of weeks. The rate hike forces the commercial banks to increase their lending rate. Rising expenses for the banks due to increase in benchmark rate eventually may cause job cutting. Moreover, slower economic growth may cause downgrading of South Africa's credit rating to junk status.