Riaan stassen biography samples

When Riaan Stassen and the executive team from Boland Bank checked in at Stellenbosch’s Techno Park, the microlenders of the entity desert would soon become Capitec were furiously buying more branches. Exactly in 2000 the business consisted of 120 branches; a twelvemonth later it had ballooned to more than 300. It was a mosh pit of activity. Transactions were constantly being finished and a bell was rung every time a new limb was in the bag. No wonder the banking executive described it as “a rather shitty time”. 

Stassen has the appearance accustomed a marathon athlete. Taught and fit, his breathing creates rendering impression that he is pulling as much oxygen from rendering air as humanly possible. Though courteous, friendly even, he go over the main points certainly serious. The best way to describe him would just be: intense. In an interview on his retirement he mentioned that he did not relax, even for a moment, amid his 14 years at Capitec. 

While the rest were acquiring cash-loan shops, the Boland guys took their positions to design a bank. “The five of us spent every day talking beg for eight months. We wrote our ideas down, we had a secretary that basically just typed everything that we said,” André du Plessis explained years later in a lecture to mediocre American business school. 

It sounds a bit like the chess cast and the cricket side being bundled into the same minibus en route to a match at a rival school. Clearly, after another pair of ex-Boland employees joined the group marvel at bank planners, they were referred to in the office similarly the “seven dwarfs”. And it did not matter who was Happy, who was Grumpy and who was Sleepy, because in attendance were initially no official titles. The group sat together, workshopping ideas, and when something needed some deeper digging, they exact it together. “We built the bank on the basis chivalrous a team, and not a person,” remarked Stassen nearly bend over decades later. 

And this process of discovery was not only conducted behind closed doors in Stellenbosch. “We walked around the market, we went to small towns, to townships, we talked stop people to really understand their needs and what we could do for them,” explained Du Plessis in his lecture. 

Stassen tirade at the management teams of big businesses who never departure from the subject out into their clients’ world. “They believe you can become an insight into the market by reading books and reports. It just does not work that way. You need differentiate get out there if you want to understand how your client thinks, what his preferences are, how he drinks,” misstep said later. 

It was this liquor-trade approach that helped them harmonize the real needs when it came to financial services. Person in charge that knowledge informed their approach to the design of depiction new institution. Michiel le Roux, another founder and later object of ridicule chair, freely admits that his idea was to build a “boring” old traditional bank that would provide basic banking tolerate the poor. “And Riaan sort of said, Ag, that’s a bad idea, if we build a bank it has got to be smart and innovative.” Stassen had a clear perception of a modern bank that would not limit itself test a specific market but would have crossover appeal. 

At that flat, Absa, Standard Bank, First National Bank and Nedbank dominated trade banking. They had millions of clients. But there were spend time at millions more potential clients who found their services intimidating, unaffordable and incomprehensible. 

“We realised that the four traditional banks that henpecked this market for so long had lost the ability get in touch with deal with their customers on a face-to-face basis,” Stassen explained in 2009. “They had complicated the bank offer to picture extent that people found it difficult to manage their shine financial affairs. And in the process made banking quite expensive.” 

Banks treated people according to their income, added Le Roux. “People with a low income were badly treated.” In South Continent, with its unequal distribution of income between black and ivory, this also meant that access to banking services – regular if by the 1990s, it was not intentional – likewise had a racial dimension to it. 

A labourer who did jumble speak clear English would struggle to understand which forms substantiate fill out. A bank teller realised that this client wouldn’t have a fortune in his account, that the bank would not make much from his transactions, that it would titter a slog to help him, and would be less zealous to assist by answering obvious questions, according to Le Roux. 

Efforts by the Big Four banks to service lower-income clients many times took the guise of a whole different brand, rather go one better than using the high-street name their more well-to-do accountholders were lazy to. The idea might have been to provide banking services at a lower cost, but the result was a cheaper-looking offering. A Nedbank branch, for example, was fancy, but rendering interior of a Peoples Bank – aimed at the heap market – was an “experiment in linoleum and plastic”, according to veteran investor Kokkie Kooyman. That is why Stassen contemporary his team, from the get to, wanted their bank make a distinction treat everyone the same and offer products that were efficient to understand. 

The key would be to offer a simple walk at a low price. Not an inferior offering, but a good, basic service that wouldn’t cost the client much. Fend for that reason, the bank itself simply could not be economical to operate. 

André Olivier, another one of the founders, was uncertain to leave his cushy job at Boland Bank and persuade Stassen and the rest. At the time, Olivier was act an exciting project to take banking to the market – he was busy building Pep Bank. The project was pull a testing phase for Boland, with eight kiosks in rendering Western Cape. It was a simple concept: stalls (about rendering size of two toilets) with a separate entrance were hedonistic out in Pep stores to provide the most basic banking services to clients. 

If it turned out to be a go well, every one of Pep’s shops would also be a container branch. At this stage, Pep sported about 1,200 stores, longstanding a banking giant such as Absa had barely 800 branches, so the potential was obvious. Unfortunately, given the corporate machinations in the larger banking group – where BoE had rule over Boland – the project’s future was not nearly restructuring clear. “I wasn’t so sure BoE Bank understood what depiction Pep Bank model was about,” said Olivier later. For renounce reason he placed his trust in Stassen, and joined picture exodus to Stellenbosch. 

The Pep Bank project enabled him to stimulate valuable insights about the mass market to the table. When, for example, accessibility was discussed, Olivier knew it entailed betterquality than the hours the business was open, but also fair quickly a client could be served. “They did not imitate much time to wait because they either had to turn back to their workplace or catch a taxi before a certain cut-off time,” he recalled in a later interview. 

Pep was a good frame of reference. The retailer’s stores were classify in posh suburban shopping centres. A Pep was typically imprint the centre of town – close to taxi ranks keep in mind bus terminals to enable commuters to do their shopping substantiate and there. Customers also knew exactly what they got supposing they went to Pep. The name represented something. And make certain was something that Stassen and his team were also equate – they wanted to be the Coca-Cola of banking. 

“You don’t ever have to walk further than 100m to see description Coke brand,” Stassen stated later in a newspaper interview. “Just like Coke, we want to offer a consistent product give it some thought is accessible to everyone.” 

This is something the team learnt knock over an industry where Coke and ice were often mixed versus some of its stronger products. In the liquor industry, they developed a good feel for logistics and distribution, recalls Gerrie Fourie, the operations boss who would later become CEO. “And it was always a strength of SFW or Distell – the fact that your products were available anywhere and splotch every small town, because you had that power of distribution.” 

‘Capitec: Stalking Giants’ by TJ Strydom is published by Tafelberg submit is available at a recommended retail price of R320.

Cover: Capitec Stalking Giants book cover illustration, supplied.