Cape Town – Nedbank – one of South Africa’s big four banks – on Wednesday acknowledged that its workforce profiles at senior management level need to be more “demographically represented”, with a stronger focus on African employees.
However, among the four major banks Nedbank has fared the best with regard to transformation targets.
Nedbank CEO Mike Brown said the institution has total measured black shareholding of 37.55%, and black women shareholding of 17.39%. These figures are based on Nedbank’s 2016 Financial Sector Charter verified score.
The bank has a 54% black top management representation, 60% at middle management level and 88% in junior management.
Moving to black economic empowerment schemes, Brown said Nedbank’s broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE) scheme – Eyethu – unlocked R8.2bn in realised value for more than 500 000 SA shareholders.
“Participants included clients, staff, community interest groups and active black business partners.”
Brown pointed out though that the bank has learnt that transformation must happen "from the inside out”.
“This requires vision, values and structural alignment. It must be led by the board and the CEO,” Brown said.
He feared that stricter BEE targets across the various sector codes would lead to lower BBBEE levels going forward. “More work needs to be done to prevent the discounting on priority elements of new scorecards – particularly in the areas of enterprise and supplier development.”