CUSTOMER STORY
Gloria Serobe: ‘If you are a black
person in that (credit) committee, look
at where black people are struggling
in lines of approval. You can’t just sit
in an air-conditioned office and say
the credit committees are white and
pale’.
Gloria Serobe, Chief Executive Officer of WIPHOLD
if government is serious about dealing with racism, it should look
at ways of examining these accusations that I’m making,’ says
Combi. ‘Government must look at the number of liquidations
between houses owned by black and white people. That will tell
you who the banks favour.’
Combi believes Postbank could become a solution for advancing
more credit to black people and their businesses; however, they
would have to be creative, he notes.
‘Postbank has to be more aggressive and not simply act like a
post office.’
Combi thinks that starting a black-owned bank in 2014 would
be quite difficult as the capital requirements are high. He adds
that there is no real competition in banking in South Africa.
‘It took Afrikaners from Stellenbosch to identify the need to
service the so-called unsecured and low-end black market,’ he
says. ‘They changed the banking dynamics. Because of their
sustainability as a business, it proves that more lending can be
done for black people.’
Combi says he had enquired who the bulk of loans are made
to, and was told that the bulk goes to black communities who use
the funding for home improvements.
On the future of Thembeka Capital at Capitec, Combi says he
sees it as a long-term investor in the Stellenbosch-based group.
When the deal matures, he says, Thembeka will sit down with
other share