Mary Vilakazi is the new Group Chief Executive Officer of FirstRand – South Africa’s largest bank by market cap.

Last year, FirstRand announced that then-CEO Alan Pullinger would step down as group CEO and be succeeded by Vilakazi, who was the group’s chief operating officer (COO), on 1 April 2024.

As one of three FirstRand executive directors, Vilakazi worked closely with Pullinger on strategy execution and successfully led a number of key growth and diversification strategies.

“Vilakazi is close to the strategies and operations of the underlying portfolio of businesses through her membership of the executive committees and advisory boards of the operating businesses. As the CEO of the corporate centre, she has oversight of the key central functions of risk, compliance, treasury and audit,” FirstRand said at the time of the announcement.

Her promotion to CEO was part of a massive leadership overhaul, during which several high-ranking executives took on new roles.

FirstRand CFO Harry Kellan became FNB CEO, replacing Jacques Celliers, who became an executive responsible for FirstRand’s fintech strategy.

Vilkazi joined FirstRand as COO in 2018 after serving as Chief Financial Officer and deputy CEO at Momentum Metropolitan Holdings.

In terms of education, she received a Bcom Honours from the University of Witwatersrand, where her husband Zeblon is now the vice-chancellor, and is a Chartered Accountant.

Vilikazi’s position makes her the first black woman to lead the group, which has a market cap of R443 billion.

For context, Standard Bank is second, with R361 billion in market cap and the largest bank in South Africa in terms of assets under management.

Capitec, South Africa’s largest bank by customer numbers, comes in third, with a market cap of R317 billion.

However, FirstRand’s title as the biggest bank is most certainly deserved: the group is an exceptionally large company that houses FNB, RMB, Wesbank, Ashburton Investments, DirectAxis, MotoVantage in South Africa, and the UK-based Aldermore and MotoNovo.

Source: TRADE FINANCE