A case can be made that as telecommunications providers venture into the world of financial services, they will be looking to fill their ranks with more finance-orientated executives.
This week SA’s largest mobile operator, Vodacom, announced the appointment of Raisibe Morathi as its new CFO. She joins Vodacom from Nedbank, where she had held the same position since 2009.
Like competitor MTN, Vodacom has looked to mobile money, e-commerce and other financial products for growth as traditional voice revenues have declined and data margins are squeezed.
For Vodacom, this has culminated in it forming a financial services division, born out of the remnants of the failed M-Pesa mobile money business in SA and headed by another alumnus of the finance sector, Mariam Cassim.
Morathi joins the Midrand-based operator on the heels of its newly formed partnership with the world’s largest mobile payments provider, Alipay. Parent company Vodafone recently passed on the reins for the M-Pesa brand to Vodacom and its Kenyan affiliate, Safaricom.
All of this points to a group with a sharp focus on growing and expanding its reach in a market that Morathi undoubtedly knows.
In Roodepoort, MTN’s current CFO, Ralph Mupita, begins his tenure as CEO in the next week. A former Old Mutual CEO, Mupita is a financial services veteran who, with current boss Rob Shuter — a former banking executive himself — have overseen the expansion of MTN’s mobile money (MoMo) product to almost 40-million users.
The big two aren’t the only ones reading the tea leaves.
In Centurion, Telkom has waded into these waters, starting with a rebrand of its 70-year old Yellow Pages to an e-commerce platform overseen by former banking executive Lunga Siyo. Earlier this month, the operator officially launched Telkom Financial Services.
With the way things are going, Sim Tshabalala at Standard Bank may be more afraid of losing top talent to Shameel Joosub at Vodacom than to Jacques Celliers at FNB in the near future.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.