CASE STUDY

When I graduated as an electrical engineer with a specialisation in high voltage, I never thought I’ d find myself as the CTO of a lending business serving banks and SMEs. The first step in this direction was being frustrated in my job at Eskom, the south African power utility, and getting the opportunity to work for Internet Solutions in their new eCommerce division. My horizons exploded! I went from corporate bureaucracy and encountering very few new ideas to an overload of possibility and innovation. I couldn’ t keep up. It was as much as I could do to wrestle the opportunities in front of me. emotional intelligence, a desire to serve and the ability to get things done. As a result, I got to do and be part of some amazing things over the last 25 years. I have always been drawn to solving difficult problems and as a result, providing services to SMEs has consumed a large part of my career.

As CTO of Merchant Capital since November 2015, I have spearheaded the evolution of the organisation from manual processes to scalable, cost-effective, system-driven operations. In an organisation that is scaling up, I have had to blend the strategic with the hands-on business of getting things done. There are still some parts of our system that contain changes I made myself when I was the only technology person in the business.

Since then, I have benefitted from working with and for incredible people who helped develop me into who I am today. They were a great mix of ambition,

Over the years, we have transformed the experience our customers have from needing to submit hundreds of pages of bank statements and other information and then waiting a few days for an approval to a simple digital form and approval in a few hours( and sometimes a few minutes). We have also built technology that helps one of our leading banks lend better and faster to their customers.

As a result, we have been able to lend to tens of thousands of SMEs, supporting their growth with the capital they need for the next step.

Prior to Merchant Capital, I had a wild ride from those early days at Internet Solutions. I was put on an internal project in healthcare that led to the launch of healthbridge, a business that has transformed the interactions of doctors with medical aids, changing the time it took for them to get paid from months to a week or so. I got to do lots of innovative stuff there including negotiate and launch South Africa ' s first non-bank card acquiring solution SureSwipe, and then launch POCiT, a mobile payments platform and start-up division of the group.

POCiT witnessed exponential growth, launching one of South Africa ' s first mobile payment services and garnering widespread recognition for innovation. This helped me win the NSTF Award for Innovation in 2010.

What are the biggest technology priorities for your organisation right now, and how are you aligning them with business strategy?

2025 is focussed on enhancing the customer experience to drive growth. We’ ll make things smoother and quicker whilst avoiding the temptation to‘ over-tech’ the experience. At the heart of our business are the relationships we build with our customers.

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