- Absa has restructured its business, moving many of its executives to the group's executive committee.
- Punki Modise, Faisal Mkhize, Thabo Mashaba, Cowyk Fox, Geoffrey Lee and Saviour Chibiya will all sit on the exco from 1 July.
- The bank says it is committed to delivering on its transformation aspirations and growing its own timber.
Absa has promoted four black executives to join Arrie Rautenbach in the group's executive committee, bringing black representation at its leadership level closer to 50%.
Punki Modise, who acted as the group's CFO in 2021, has been appointed the group's chief strategy and sustainability officer. She will lead a newly established environmental, social and governance (ESG) exco portfolio.
Absa will also create new commercial cluster divisions, whose heads will sit on the exco. All the changes are in the group's biggest division, Absa Retail and Business Banking (RBB). It has been broken up into three business units, taking Absa's commercial clusters from two to five. Previously it only had RBB and Corporate and Investment Banking (CIB).
Now it will have Everyday Banking, Relationship Banking, Product Solutions, CIB Pan-Africa and RBB Africa Regional Operations. The new operating model comes into effect on 1 July.
Faisal Mkhize, the managing executive of relationship banking at RBB, will now become an executive for relationship banking in SA, focusing on the business banking and private wealth segments. Where he reported to the RBB CEO in the past, he'll now account directly to the group CEO and join the bank's exco.
The role of Absa's group chief people officer, a position occupied by Thabo Mashaba in the interim since May, is also an exco role.
Other internal people joining the exco are Cowyk Fox, who currently leads Absa's relationship and everyday banking operations, and Geoffrey Lee, who will lead the newly constituted "product solutions cluster". This is the business that will lead Absa's secured lending businesses, like home loans, vehicle finance, and auto insurance businesses.
Outside of SA, Saviour Chibiya will now be responsible for RBB Africa Regional Operations as a CEO. He will assume full accountability for businesses in the rest of the continent.
'Deliberate' about transformation
Absa faced immense backlash when its board announced Rautenbach as the man to permanently succeed Daniel Mminele in March this year. Although analysts hailed him as the best man for the job and applauded Absa's rare internal succession, the outcry from the Black Management Forum and the bank's biggest shareholder, the Public Investment Corporation, echoed louder.
Rautenbach has not spoken to the public about that until now.
"We are very deliberate around these exco changes to deliver against that, [our] strategy. But clearly, part of that strategy is also for us, not just to lead commercially but also to lead from a transformation and inclusivity perspective. We very deliberate about that," he said on Thursday.
Rautenbach said these changes were informed by the direction in which Absa is headed. They were always going to come through as the bank wanted to bring its business units closer to customers and give them more independence.
He echoed the bank's chairperson Sello Moloko's remarks at the last AGM earlier in June, where he declared the board and the executive's alignment in delivering on Absa's transformation and commercial aspirations.
"We've said that every opportunity we get, we will make sure we see positive change across both those elements. So, this is exciting in the sense that we are seeing some real progress. And these are all colleagues that come from within our organisation," said Rautenbach.
Building own timber
While Absa's new flatter structure was primarily informed by the bank's desire to "move closer to customers" and speed up its organic market share growth, Rautenbach said it was also about adopting the philosophy of "building you own timber".
The executives it elevated to the exco have been with the bank for 70 years combined. Everyone has been there for at least 15 years, with Mkhize serving Absa the longest at 25 years.
Below these executives, Rautenbach said the bank has also been hard at work expanding its black senior management cohort so it can have the next generation of leaders set up for the future.
"By making these changes, you create another set of real opportunities … And again, it allows us to really focus on our talent, growing our own timber and setting up the leaders for tomorrow," he said.
Absa was heavily criticised in the past for not having a solid succession plan that allowed people to move up the ranks to the CEO level when there was no one internally to succeed Maria Ramos. The Association of Black Securities and Investment Professionals noted that the bank needs to revisit its long-term pipeline.
"Succession management is an important part of our corporate strategy. That is the priority for us. Working with our talent, growing our own timber, setting colleagues up for success is the right thing to do for the colleagues as well as for the organisation. And we will continue to focus on that," said Rautenbach.
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