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Fixing the banking sector one loose bolt at a time

Johannesburg - Andile Ramavhunga is anything but a typical banker.

He looks, walks and dresses nothing like a corporate honcho who runs one of the fastest-growing mutual banks in the country.

The Alberton-born reigning Absip CEO of the Year and VBS Mutual Bank CEO has earned himself a reputation as a banking mechanic. His identical twin brother Andisa is a successful businessman.

VBS shot to prominence in September 2016, when it emerged that President Jacob Zuma had secured a home loan from it to repay R7.8 million spent on non-security upgrades to his Nkandla homestead, in line with a court order.

Ramavhunga is one of seven siblings and has admittedly had a blessed life. He matriculated from St Francis College in Benoni and completed a BCom at what was then Rand Afrikaans University (RAU), his honours at the University of Natal and his articles at Deloitte.

“I never had a good time at Deloitte. It was a rough three years,” Ramavhunga says. He resigned, but one of the firm’s partners convinced him to stay.

He joined FirstRand Bank and sharpened his skills as a newly qualified chartered accountant (CA).

“At FirstRand, it was better because I was under no contract and they needed black people.

"At the time there were less than 700 black CAs in the country, so we were in high demand.” Two years later, he joined Absa.

“That was the best job I ever had. They gave me autonomy. I built things, I destroyed things.”

It was the first time he had to manage a diverse team and remains one of the few workplaces where he has not experienced racism.

His next career stop was the Land Bank – a mess at the time.

He was so attracted to the challenge of joining a struggling bank that he opted to personally repay Absa the retention bonus it paid him.

“I have never taken a job for money, but for the growth opportunity and to learn.”

At the Land Bank, he worked with Phakamani Hadebe to turn the ailing institution around.

This started his reputation as a banking mechanic of sorts.

Within two years, development finance bank Ithala managed to woo him to Durban to be its chief operating officer.

“Ithala gave me an opportunity that an ordinary township boy wouldn’t ordinarily get. I was young and running a bank,” he says with a pinch of gratitude in his voice.

Three and a half years later, with Ithala on a sound footing, he was roped into the Small Enterprise Finance Agency when it was being established in 2012.

“I was the first recruit, even before they gave it a name. I didn’t even have a title,” he says.

“This thing was announced in Parliament and I was reporting to the president and minister [of economic development Ebrahim Patel]. Only a fool would say no to that kind of job.”

However, VBS came knocking and the person doing the knocking was its current chairperson Tshifhiwa Matodzi, an old varsity friend.

“When we were at RAU, we always spoke about running VBS. All he did was remind me of the dream. I initially refused, but he was persistent.”

The bank had a client book of around 6 000 and a single product: rural home loans. Ramavhunga grew it exponentially to around 60 000 clients, despite it still having only eight walk-in branches. It now offers a range of commercial services.

“It was making a lot of losses. First thing I did was interview everyone there. The problem was skills and very outdated processes.”

With the country’s power outage crisis and banks being tightfisted, VBS made a killing funding Eskom suppliers with purchase orders.

“The results were amazing. Our endgame is to build a diversified financial services offering which will include insurance, asset management and more.”

Ramavhunga says the lack of transformation in the financial service sector is an opportunity to do things differently.

With an eye for seeing the silver lining on the darkest clouds and for spotting opportunities, Ramavhunga certainly seems set for greater things.

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