Banker S.A. April 2014 | Page 47

Customer Story ‘The people that you interact with have no authority. Your application is sent to regional and national credit committees. They have basically removed the element of knowing the person, unless you are a high-profile black person.’ ‘It starts with personal banking,’ Combi claims. ‘The facilities granted to blacks versus whites. White people get huge overdrafts, and these excessive facilities result in their properties getting liquidated. They get easy bonds, easy overdrafts.’ Combi, whose company is invested in the mid-sized bank, Capitec, says he has had to personally confront some of the banks to get a bigger loan facility. ‘I have learnt of racism by personally confronting some of these banks. Banks are still looking at black people as high risk. They must produce the statistics to disprove that.’ He says that what has made things difficult for black people is a change in the banking system. Combi maintains that 20 years ago a customer knew their bank manager, and that the bank manager knew the customer’s standing and business. ‘The bank manager could take a risk. That is different today. The people that you interact with have no authority. Your application is sent to regional and national credit committees. They have basically removed the element of knowing the person, unless you are a high-profile black person.’ Out of approximately seven directors listed as serving on the credit committee in Nedbank’s website, three are black and are finance directors Raisibe Morathi, Mustaq Brey and Gloria Serobe. The other members are Mike Brown, Thomas Boardman, Graham Dempster, and Ian Gladman. At Standard Bank, out of the five directors listed on the website as serving on the credit committee two of its members, Sim Tshabalala and Fred Phaswana, are black. They serve alongside Simon Ridley, Myles Ruck, and Doug Band. Barclays Africa Group’s concentration risk committee, which considers and approves the largest credit applications, is made up of Colin Beggs, David Hodnett, Wendy Lucas-Bull, Trevor Munday, and Maria Ramos. At FirstRand the set up is quite different as the group has banking and lending franchises like FNB, Wesbank and Rand Merchant Bank. These franchises have their own executives. FirstRand’s committee loo