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New Capitec CEO ready for the challenge

Cape Town - Gerrie Fourie, Capitec Bank’s incoming CEO, starts his year on a high note after a strong performance in 2013, and with ambitious plans to take the bank to new heights.

Fourie plans to focus on the continued delivery of friendly, simplified and pioneering banking, but with an even stronger focus on innovation to meet clients’ everyday needs.

“Innovation is not just technology. Yes, it is part of it, but it’s so much more," he said.

Fourie, who stepped out of his position as chief operating officer for 13 years to take over as CEO, is known internally as a person who “gets things done” with a can-do attitude.

He takes over the retail bank from Riaan Stassen.

"The bank was relatively unknown five years ago, but today has over 625 branches, almost half located in higher-income areas," Capitec said in a statement.

Capitec recently surpassed the 5 million client mark by signing on about 100 000 new clients per month.

These gains were made during the financially turbulent global recession, while Fourie was COO of the company.

“As incoming CEO, it will be important for me to sustain this positive growth by increasing our transactional footprint, improving our access convenience and growing our product offering,” said Fourie.

“I have big shoes to fill. Riaan was a visionary and an entrepreneur. He wanted to change the retail banking game in the early 2000s and most of what has been established at Capitec Bank has created a foundation to do just that," said Fourie.

"His approach was to build a bank that was transparent, simple to use and affordable. I believe we achieved that during his tenure as CEO and have changed the face of banking for the future.”  

Capitec innovations include the cashless branch concept, a biometric fingerprint identification system that increases its client’s security, paperless transactions in branches and opening on Sundays.

Of Capitec’s 5-million clients, 58% are transactional account-holders, 19% have fixed-term savings accounts and 23% access its credit facilities.

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