Thomas rides outreach gains to berth in top executive suite

NEDBANK’S top executive management team is arguably the most transformed among South Africa’s big four banks.

The group deepened transformation at the top executive level this week by appointing Ciko Thomas, 46, managing executive for the retail and business banking division, the second-largest business by profits at Nedbank Group.

Thomas, a marketing guru who became a banker, has been rewarded partly for his efforts in leading Nedbank to a customer base the company had previously neglected, especially in the black township and small-town market.

Thomas started his career as a marketing trainee at Unilever. He also marketed tobacco brands such as Benson & Hedges and beverages Lion Lager and Carling Black Label.

When he arrived at Nedbank in January 2010, he started as group executive: marketing, communication and corporate affairs, but a year later was attracted to the profit centre and became managing executive of consumer banking, working under Ingrid Johnson, who is now Old Mutual’s finance director. Johnson is said to have played a big role in mentoring Thomas.

“I look forward to seeing Ciko and the retail and business banking team continue to make things happen,” said Johnson.

As head of consumer banking, Thomas had oversight of Nedbank Retail’s personal transactional banking franchise and the unsecured lending portfolio (excluding the card division), among other things.

With his marketing background, he has often declined to be identified as a banker. But he seems to have reluctantly accepted the title.

“I suppose you can’t escape these titles. I’m a dealer. I’m a banker salesman,” said Thomas, who also previously sold cars as a co-owner of BMW and Volkswagen dealerships in central Johannesburg.

“I’m probably a bit of a chameleon. People get surprised that I studied a BSc in chemistry. I get a lot of comfort with reinventing myself.”

Thomas credits Johnson with converting him to banking. His appointment has not just been about plugging in a black face at the top; it has been about Thomas’s commitment to financial inclusion.

“I look back and I remember vividly, in January 2010, people said to me: ‘You are going to work for that elite bank?’ We did not have many branches in the townships.”

He and his team realised the enormity of the task they faced in providing capital in areas where there was a scarcity of credit, said Thomas.

With the influential leadership of people such as Gloria Serobe, a former Nedbank non- RETAIL: Ciko Thomas will run a key Nedbank division executive director who is passionate about rural development, his team was able to take banking to outlying areas and “break norms around credit rules to get lending” to rural people. Thomas said Nedbank started lending to a group of people involved in agricultural initiatives who would not have ordinarily received credit as individuals.

“It’s been about access and financial inclusion . . . That book performs and those communities pay us back,” he said.

The bank has often started off by setting up small kiosks in supermarkets and hardware outlets where people need capital to buy building materials for home improvements. Many of these people may not qualify for home loans because they live on untitled land in rural areas.

“We have watched some of these kiosks in places such as Mount Frere [a small town in

It’s about financial inclusion . . . That book performs, those communities pay us back

the Transkei] develop into fullservice branches. [In the past] we did not even have an ATM in Mount Frere,” said Thomas.

In 2010, Nedbank had 495 branches, about 144 retailer outlets in Boxer and Pick n Pay stores and 241 kiosks. By December last year, its network had increased to 559 branches, 149 retailer outlets and 294 kiosks in CashBuild and Build it stores.

In 2010, the company had a total retail client base of 4.8 million; this now stands at just over seven million.

“I think we have given him lots of banking experience over the past five to six years . . . He thoroughly deserves the job,” said Nedbank CEO Mike Brown.

Thomas also has an MBA from the University of the Witwatersrand and last year completed an advanced management programme at Harvard.