Founded in 1862, Standard Bank Group has become a pan-African financial institution with a global reach, playing a pivotal role in the continent’s development. Operating in 26 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Standard Bank Group is the continent’s largest lender by asset size, with approximately USD $170 billion total assets and over 19.4 million active clients as of June 2024.
In this interview, Mwansa Mutati, Head of Personal and Private Banking, Africa Regions, shared the bank’s plans to expand Women’s Markets proposition to its operations across the continent, building on the programs successfully rolled out in Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda and Zambia.
Alliance: Could you tell us about Standard Bank Group’s market position in its home country, South Africa, and more broadly across Africa?
Mwansa Matuti: Standard Bank is one of the largest banks in South Africa, with a significant market presence. What sets us apart is our diverse product offerings, including personal and private banking, business and commercial banking, corporate and investment banking, insurance, and asset management. These cater to a wide range of clients, from individuals to large corporations and across various geographies in the African market.
The key characteristic that I believe makes Standard Bank a force to be reckoned with in Africa is its vast presence across the continent, with an extensive network of more than 1,200 branches and points of representation as well as approximately 5,500 ATMs. When we have physical presence in a country it means we resonate with the people in that country, and we make a tangible statement that says that we are here to drive Africa’s growth.
Alliance: Your banks in Zambia, Kenya and Uganda have introduced programs for women and now you are expanding those across all your markets. What segments and value propositions are you considering?
Mwansa: Yes, we have a women proposition in Zambia which I started in a previous role I held at Stanbic Bank Zambia called Anakazi which means “woman”. In Kenya, we have DADA which has a dual meaning—it means sister in Swahili but it’s also an acronym that stands for Dare to Dream, Dare to Aspire. Then in Uganda we have a women’s proposition called Stanbic for Her. In Nigeria, we have “Blue Blossom” that is tailored for women in business. We have given the proposition in each country a unique name that resonates with the women in that market. The key message we are driving with these names is “we see you; we hear you; we value you”.
With Group level membership to the Financial Alliance for Women, we are looking to rollout women propositions in the rest of our markets to ensure that we drive value for the female retail banking client, whether she runs a business or is a professional or both. We find that there’s a high prevalence of women who have formal employment but also run businesses both informally and formally. As such, the key segments we will be focusing on are retail, high net worth in personal banking and micro/SMEs in business banking. We want to lead with non-financial services as the core of all our propositions as we believe this is the key to empowering women with the necessary tools and knowledge for unlocking their financial growth. The financial services pillar is also important and is something that will be considered with each market’s maturity levels and appetite.
Alliance: How important are digital financial services for bringing more women customers to your banks?
Mwansa: Digital financial services within African Regions is a critical component and something that we must do as a bank to remain relevant. It is even more important for us to get it right for women clients, especially on the African continent because of the economic gender gap that exists as well as various constraints that women face when it comes to financial services and products. Furthermore, from a strategic perspective we have a digital inclusion focus under our Social, Economic and Environmental impact strategic pillar which speaks to us ensuring that access to physical branches is not a barrier to entry for our clients in our overall drive towards contributing to a more financially inclusive continent. For example, as part of Stanbic for Her in Uganda, we have an e-wallet solution called FlexiPay that is convenient and popular among women MSMEs.
Alliance: While capturing sex-disaggregated data is critical to establishing a baseline for a Women’s Markets program, many banks have significant challenges due to their legacy systems. Where are you at in your gender data journey?
Mwansa: Our sex-disaggregated data journey is still in its infancy. The key challenge we face is that currently we do not have sex-disaggregated data at a central or Group level and countries are at different maturity levels. We see this as one of the key actions to address through our membership with the Financial Alliance for Women. Some of our country leads for women propositions have attended the Gender Data Learning Series and are starting to develop plans to ensure that we don’t just stop at capturing sex-disaggregated data, but also report on and extract insights that will help us make informed business decisions.
Alliance: Internal gender diversity and inclusion are important to successfully targeting the women’s market. In terms of female representation among Standard Bank Group employees, where do you stand, and what have been the key success factors in getting to that representation?
Mwansa: Standard Bank has taken a firm position on gender diversity and inclusion and has initiatives in place not to just promote but ensure that we achieve gender inclusivity. Currently, from an employee perspective the Standard Bank Group has about 50,000 employees, over half of whom are female. The Chairman of the board is female (Nonkululeko Nyembezi) and of the 12 executives that report directly to the Group CEO (Sim Tshabalala), four are female.
I am also pleased that the CEO of the PPB business is female (Funeka Montjane), and she is an advocate for females in the workplace. Funeka started a Women Leadership program called “Blue Malkia” (Malkia means Queen in Swahili) to ensure that women are given a platform that empowers them with practical tools to show up as the best version of themselves in the professional context. I have also personally mentored and continue to mentor females across the organization. So, I would say one of the key success factors in getting the right representation is having deliberate programs focused on growing women in an organization.
The second is having deliberate targets that form part of performance scorecards. Tracking the institution against targets is critical, otherwise you will never get the right representation. It also forces the organization to foster talent accordingly. While we are tracking well in terms of female representation at the general employee level, we know there is still room to grow at the senior leadership level, and so we have designed specific programs to build the pipeline for women to get into leadership roles.
In terms of my own Executive Committee (Personal and Private Banking, Africa Regions ExCom) I have 21 members, 13 of whom are female. In building the business case for women propositions across the continent, I intentionally enlisted the leadership and support of female members within my ExCom. Ultimately, I believe we cannot begin to solve for women customers appropriately until we have the right female representation at an organizational level too.
Alliance: Why did Standard Bank Group join the Alliance, and what are you looking forward to learning from and/or sharing with the network?
Mwansa: We decided to join the Alliance because of our level of commitment to increase our market share amongst women. Our vision is to become the bank of choice for women across the African continent and become a value creation partner and enabler in driving the rising wealth of women in Africa. We cannot do that if we have women propositions in only four out of fourteen markets with a retail presence and so the decision to join as a Group was made to ensure that we start developing women’s propositions in all our markets.
The country level membership with Zambia, Kenya and Uganda has yielded positive results for the respective markets and a Group membership will ensure that the benefits and resources are available to all our markets as they start to develop country specific women propositions.
We would like to ensure that we extend our appeal and reach to women. One of the most critical things we hope to learn in this partnership is how to get it right, as the Alliance has members across the globe who have tapped into this market and are seeing the value for their female clients as well as themselves. We look forward to learning how to leverage data to tell a better story about our female clients. While the focus on females for us means that we can be impactful in a meaningful way from a social and economic perspective, we really want to take it to the next level and demonstrate how we can create a significant financial impact for women on the continent and ourselves through a focus on female clients.
