PROFILE
Bubble?
What
bubble?
‘What concerns me about the
macro-economic environment is
whether we’ll be able to create
enough jobs going forward in order
to deal with unemployment and
with poverty, and whether we’ll be
able to stop those retrenchments,’
says Tami Sokutu, Executive
Director of African Bank Limited.
Phillip de Wet reports
A
day after banks met with Finance Minister Pravin
Gordhan late August [2012] to discuss the sudden
growth in unsecured lending in South Africa over
the last year, Tami Sokutu was even more sanguine
about the future. Cautious and watchful, certainly
– as you would expect from the Executive Director in charge of
seeing the risk big picture for African Bank and Ellerines (which is
wholly owned by African Bank) – but not worried. He sees plenty
of upside in the market, if everyone continues to keep their heads.
‘The next couple of years will depend on how we respond now to
the increase in unsecured lending, at an industry level and certainly
at a bank level,’ he says. ‘We’re being a lot more conservative now,
managing the risk pro-actively, and that’s where we need to be.’
The rise in unsecured credit has been swift, and that has raised
eyebrows, but Sokutu is comforted by the fact that only a small
portion of that lending is for consumption, and as long as people
Edition 3
THE BANKER
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