Trading Places
CARMAKER Volkswagen Group South Africa has appointed two new directors to its management board: Stefan Mecha, who has succeeded Petra Hoffmann as director for sales and marketing, and Henning Jens, who is to become finance director in place of Carsten Stapel.
Mecha joins Volkswagen South Africa from Hamburg, Germany, where he was the regional director for sales and marketing for northern Germany. Before his time in Hamburg, he held senior positions in the Volkswagen Group in the Middle East. He has an MSc in marketing and an MBA from global graduate business school INSEAD.
Jens has moved to South Africa from Volkswagen Osnabrück in Germany, where he was chief finance officer and board member for finance controlling, IT and purchasing.
He has also been a board member for finance at the Karman Group in Germany.
The new finance director has degrees in mechanical and industrial engineering and holds an MBA from Purdue University, Indiana, in the US. SHA Specialist Underwriters, a company that provides insurance underwriting services, has announced two promotions.
Odett van Jaarsveld is to become head of retention liability: corporate solutions, but retains her responsibilities as the head of single projects, and Kirsten Cronin has become the manager of the section dealing with corporate solutions for financial institutions.
Van Jaarsveld has been with SHA for 19 months and will now have an increased focus on client relations and retaining existing business. She started working in the insurance industry in 1992 where she was introduced to engineering underwriting.
Cronin joined SHA in 2013. As the manager of corporate solutions for financial institutions, she will be responsible for increasing and retaining business in this sector — mainly the directors and officers liability and commercial crime insurance.
Cronin has an LLB from Unisa and began her career in 2007 as a legal claims administrator for a business that handled claims on behalf of Emerald Underwriting Managers (now Emerald Risk Transfer).
She moved into underwriting in 2010.