Driving social change with an eye on the bottom line

THERE is a Rolls-Royce, a Maserati, an Aston Martin and a couple of Porsches, but it is the Bugatti Veyron that occupies pride of place in the collection of fast cars owned by Sizwe Nxasana, the CE of FirstRand , the South African financial services group.

But the vehicles are models that line a shelf in
the Johannesburg office of the first black South African to head one of the country’s big four commercial banking groups. And the 52-year- old Nxasana is a very different kind of businessman to the politically well-connected black entrepreneurs known for their lifestyles and powerful motors.

At home in SA there are emerging markets, too. Nxasana sees the rise of a black middle class as crucial for the group’s prospects. “Just anecdotally, if you look at WesBank (an asset-based financing business) in the early 2000s, only about 5%-8% of new business came from the black population in terms of financing motor vehicles,” he says. “Today, that number is close to 40% or 45%. Therefore, there’s been a significant growth over the last couple of years of the contribution that comes from the black population into the economy. The same applies to home loans or other parts of our business.”

Moreover, Nxasana intends to build on FirstRand’s reputation for providing finance for black empowerment deals. “It is important that black people get an opportunity to create wealth for themselves,” he says

Nxasana now says that strategic priorities will be determined at the centre. “It is a much tighter definition and a lot more co-ordinated across the business units,” he says.

Part of this strategy includes bringing in more black and Asian managers so that the group will better reflect and understand the markets in which it is operating. Although this will take time, Nxasana says that efforts — such as the provision of grants to black students studying chartered accountancy and other financial disciplines — have picked up speed and been given more focus since his arrival. And despite dipping profits, the amounts contributed to social responsibility programmes have increased.

More generally, Nxasana is insistent about the need to increase the skills and knowledge of black students, whose underperformance in areas such as maths and science is a source of acute concern to the government.

Afriversity is a strong believer in education being the most powerful tool to combat poverty and strives to give individuals the ability to dream again...