FirstRand’s Mary Vilakazi evolving to banking

As FirstRand’s chief operating officer, Mary Vilakazi is one of the most powerful women in the South African banking industry. But she does not yet consider herself a banker.

A chartered accountant by profession, she had her heart set on auditing the ‘glamourous’ banking industry while serving articles at PwC. Instead, she was assigned to the team covering insurance, which the then 21-year old initially considered one of the unexciting assignments.

Her curiosity was soon sparked by working alongside actuaries to properly understand the technicalities of the industry and its reporting standards. At the same, former Pension Funds Adjudicator Vuyani Ngalwana’s findings related to the costs incurred by retirement annuity members and their impact on the industry provided further interest. As someone from humble beginnings, she also realised the value of insurance in setting up and providing for future generations. 

The fateful assignment also proved to be the foundation on which much of her professional success was built.

At the age of 27, she became one of the youngest partners at PwC worldwide, which she attributes to hard work, preparation, insurance experience and a little bit of luck. Two years later she signed off on Metropolitan Holdings’ financial results, allowing her to directly engage with senior executives of the group.

On the trajectory to achieve great success within the PwC group in South Africa and abroad, Vilakazi left the audit profession after realising that she could make an impact and create opportunities for others outside of the organisation and be a more present mother at the same time.

She continued to work, this time as CFO of an entrepreneurial mineral services company – a role that allowed her to spend more time with her children.

“My youngest daughter appreciated me being at home but my eldest one kept saying ‘Mama, when are you going back to dressing up for work?’,” she recalls, adding that she often shares this story with working women concerned that they may be be neglecting their children and tells them of her daughter’s pride when she returned to the corporate world.

In addition to working at the mineral services group, she took up positions on various boards, first becoming a non-executive director with Metropolitan and, following its merger with Momentum, non-executive director of MMI Holdings, among other entities. She also ran her own accounting and tax advisory business before rejoining the corporate world as CEO of balance sheet management at MMI in 2014. She was promoted to group finance director in 2015.

She was promoted to deputy chief executive in 2017, and was widely expected to take the helm of the group amid restructuring earlier this year. The market’s expectations, however, did not materialise. Understanding that CEO appointments are the prerogative of the board, Vilakazi says she had not expected to be offered the job as she had only been with the group for four years. She thought it generous of the market to have expected her to come through the ranks just then. “I trust that I will end up where I am meant to end up and if something doesn’t work out for me I clearly have choice.”

But she says this outlook is not to be confused with not having a plan. “You have to enjoy what you enjoy doing. I work hard and I’m quite deliberate in what I set out to achieve. You cannot not have a game plan. But you have to accept that some things are not in your control.

“I lost my daughter in 2015 and sometimes sit and think about how that has shaped me. As a parent, you want to protect your kids all the time but you realise that you actually can’t. The most devastating part was realising that one controls very little.

“In the context of career progression or the next opportunity, it is sometimes up to other people to enable you. If they give you the opportunity then yes, you are in control of how you show up. But you always have a choice. If something doesn’t work out, then you can do something else.”

Vilakazi moved on from MMI to FirstRand mid-year, taking up the role of COO at a time when banks are drawing criticism from some politicians for their conservative lending practices.

“First and foremost, banks must ensure that they are credible and trusted institutions that look after depositors’ money … I suppose a lot of the frustration of people not being able to access finance is most of the time at the heart [of the criticism]. But that access to finance always has to be balanced against a very big obligation of looking after depositors’ money.

“The economy needs lots of entrepreneurs to set up their own businesses and be given a leg up. There is a big role that banks can play in enabling small enterprises to create jobs … If you create an environment that enables small business, you can ask the banks to come to the party. You can have developmental finance institutions cover the first risky part and ask the banks to come in after that, with a multiplier effect.”

She says she is excited by FirstRand’s entrepreneurial flair and ‘can do’ attitude as well as how it plans and prepares to stay on top and maintain its trustworthiness.

Having already achieved great success in the insurance industry, her latest goal is to be able to call herself a banker and make a name for herself in the banking industry. “I want to make as  valuable a contribution as anyone else who has been in the industry for many years.”