In this Q&A interview with Sanah Gumede, Head of Wealth and Investment SA, Standard Bank, the South African talks about her high-net worth client responsibilities, her travels around the world, getting educated, family, her ambition to improve generational wealth transfer, and how technology is changing the business
Please briefly describe your ambitions and leadership style?
I would like to make an impact on generational wealth. Research tells us that 70% of generational wealth gets depleted by the second generation and 90% by the third. I want to stop that leakage.
My ambition is to partner with our clients to roll out initiatives that guide the next generation about money and equip them with the necessary tools to manage and grow their wealth with a clear long-term strategy to benefit future generations.
In terms of leadership, my philosophy is to focus on results and strive to leave the business, clients, and team in a better position than before. Personally, I like to create an environment that promotes ideation, where the team is empowered to generate and execute on new ideas, as I believe that is the best way to get results. The key skills required for any leadership role are always similar, with different emphases depending on the position and time. But you must always:
Deliver results
Have a strategy and communicate your vision. Encourage ideas.
Be authentic and empathic.
Learn your business and people, so you can be a subject matter expert, but know when to delegate to others’ strengths.
Have the required technical skills.
Tell us about your career, personal & professional life in terms of your upbringing, education and experiences – and how it’s impacted your approach to business?
My ideas about leadership were formed professionally by my further education experiences. I obtained a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of KwaZulu Natal in South Africa and completed the Finance Executive Development Program with GIBS and London Business School in 2010.
A turning point came in 2013-14 when I completed the Global Executive MBA at INSEAD Business School in Fontainebleau, France. My elective studies included Strategy, Structure & Incentives; Managing Multicultural and Virtual Teams; Psychology of Leadership; Corporate Governance; Making the Leadership Transition; and Entrepreneurial Leadership. This experience formed my leadership style.
Education is vital, but it comes in many different forms. Simply travelling abroad and being open to different cultures and ideas has its own virtue and benefit. I love to explore the world with my husband and kids, and friends, to see what’s out there. Being curious leads to idea creation itself. I’ve travelled to Kenya, Swaziland, Lesotho, London, Jersey, New York, Washington DC, Singapore, Bali, Bulgaria, Dubai, Munich and Shanghai, among many other places. However, my all-time happy place is still the South African bush with great views of the wildlife. My upbringing was in a village called Ramogodi in Ga- Rankuwa, Pretoria. I was raised by a phenomenal woman who taught me about love, empathy, caring, kindness, and generosity. My upbringing drove me to work hard and make a meaningful impact in others’ lives, hence my natural passion for leading teams and managing value-add client relationships.
Tell us about your professional background then?
I started out at Investec Private Banking where I began in an administrative role and worked my way up to being a Private Banker and then a Team Leader. We looked after clients who were predominantly Trainee and Chartered Accountants (managers and partners) working at the big four audit firms. The strategy was to increase Investec’s market share in the accounting space, increase the product footprint through crossselling, and enhance Investec’s brand presence within the audit firms and associated professional bodies. I spent 9 years there before departing to be Regional Manager for Private Banking at Barclays Africa Group Limited (Oct 2014 – May 2016) and then Head of Client Value Proposition at Absa Wealth and Investment (June 2016 – Sep 2017).
I joined Standard Bank in September 2017 as the Head of Wealth Management for Johannesburg, before moving internally to be Head of Client Coverage for Standard Bank’s Wealth and Investment SA business, and then becoming Head of High Net Worth (HNW) at Standard Bank South Africa.
I am presently Head of Wealth and Investment SA at the bank, responsible for a team of relationship managers (RMs), specialized lenders, fiduciary experts and wealth managers. My key focus areas are to deliver greater value to the HNW individuals and to ultra HNWIs. My aim is to elevate the client experience (CX), employee engagement and enhance processes, growth strategies and the sales experience, thereby delivering profitability. Managing risk and compliance are always a part of the job too.
(i) How has the industry changed over your career?
(ii) What are you doing to prepare your company’s plans to align with it?
(i) The biggest change I have witnessed over my career has been how client needs have evolved and become more complex. We have had to shift from just being a product provider to being more engaging with clients to better understand their needs and then offer them solutions to meet their unique needs.
With the increase in technology, as well as the Covid-19 pandemic, we have also had to think more about digital channels and shift the way we engage with our clients. Our use of technology and innovation to create various communication channels has been a significant change, as has been a post-pandemic renewed focus on getting the work / life balance correct and ensuring savings and wealth transfer plans are properly in place.
The competitive landscape we operate in has seen a significant change with the emergence of fintech enabled challenger banks, who bring with them a variety of value propositions as they attempt to carve out market share and service historically underserved segments, typically in the mass affluent self-serve segment. We’re responding appropriately. HNWIs want these capabilities too, as well as the ability to speak to Relationship Managers.
Our journey to being ‘future ready’ has challenged us to rethink our approach to serving our clients’ needs. We understand that today’s market is more complex than ever before, and clients are empowered with more information. We are therefore moving from a product based approach to an insight-led approach. Digital innovation helps us deliver it.
We want to be a platform business that works with partners to deliver effective digital services in an ecosystem full of easily accessible options. The aim is to be an organization that understands each client personally and offers them far more than just financial products. In other words, we need to go beyond banking and focus on delivering proactive and insight led engagements that lead to sales and deepening relationships.
Obviously, we want to be the partner of choice for HNWIs and that means having good products and expert staff as well. We give our clients investments that are aligned to their short, medium and long-term objectives, and which are robust enough to withstand market turmoil. Over the longer-term this is achieved by a carefully crafted allocation of global assets, designed to augment one another through inverse correlation. Assets behave differently to market stimuli, which is what enables us to provide clients with consistent returns over the longer term. Despite short-term volatility, from Covid-19 or whatever source, our portfolios deliver superior risk-adjusted returns.
Our vision is to be the leading HNWI Wealth business for Sub-Saharan clients and those interested in Africa. Aligning the people, process and technology in this fashion, and prioritizing the platformization and personalization of our business – while retaining face-to-face capabilities for U-HNWIs and investment expertise in our staff – is what will deliver success.
Our vision is to establish the leading HNWI wealth business for Sub-Saharan clients and those interested in Africa through alignment of people, process, and technology, and by prioritizing the platformization and personalization of our business while retaining face-to-face capabilities for UHNWI and in-house investment expertise. This is what we believe will drive success.