Board and executive

Chair and Independent non-executive director

• BSocSci (honours) (cum laude)
• MPhil from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar

Appointed: 1 July 2023

Committee Responsibilities: Member of the Nominations committee and member of the Mergers and Acquisitions and Remuneration committees.

Appointed as an independent non-executive director and chair of the board of directors of Alexforbes (Board), Nominations committee and member of the Mergers and Acquisitions and Remuneration committees of the Company with effect from 1 July 2023.

Subject to regulatory approval, Kuseni will also serve as independent non-executive director and chair of the board of directors of Alexander Forbes Investments Limited.

His prior executive positions include CEO of Old Mutual South Africa and Emerging Markets, Head of Anglo American South Africa, member of the Executive Committee of Anglo American plc, director of Anglo American Platinum, executive chair of the Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT) and chair of Anglo Operations Proprietary Limited. As part of his career in mining, he held several senior positions at Anglo Gold Ashanti Limited and De Beers Consolidated Mines Limited in South Africa and the United Kingdom.

Kuseni currently serves as the chair of Massmart Limited, Aspen Pharmacare Holdings Limited, Sandvik Mining Southern Africa Holdings and Fedgroup Holdings and Tennant Group. He is the lead independent director of the JSE-listed fintech, Capital Appreciation Limited.

In the non-profit space, he serves as co-chair of the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS), Chair of the University of Pretoria Council and is a member of the board of the American Chamber of Commerce in SA and the Southern Africa-Canada Chamber of Commerce.

Chief Executive Officer

• FASSA
• BSc (Actuarial Science)
• Advanced Management Programme (INSTEAD)

Appointed: 1 November 2018

Committee Responsibilities: Member of the mergers and acquisitions and social, ethics and transformation committees

Dawie was appointed group chief executive of Alexforbes on 1 November 2018. Before this, he was the chief executive officer of Sanlam Employee Benefits, a position he held since 2013. He started his career at Sanlam as an actuary in 1993 in Sanlam Life Insurance, before assuming several senior executive positions in the business. Among his achievements was leading the team responsible for negotiating the deal that led to the biggest insurance policy ever written in the history of South Africa, with premiums of R8 billion at the time.

The same team also successfully concluded the acquisition of Absa Consultants and Actuaries from Absa. His previous board memberships include Sanlam Investments East Africa, Simeka, Graviton, and ACA Employee Benefits.

Chief Finance Officer

• CA(SA)
• CFA

Appointed: 1 April 2019

Bruce was appointed chief financial officer and director of Alexander Forbes on 1 April 2019. He has over 25 years’ experience in finance, audit, accounting, taxation, financial reporting, debt structuring and corporate finance, of which more than 18 years has been with the company. Before this role, Bruce served as finance director of Alexander Forbes Group Services and was responsible for the central group finance function. Among his achievements, Bruce was part of the finance team that took the company through private equity ownership between 2007 and its relisting on the JSE in July 2014. Bruce completed his articles with Deloitte (South Africa) in Johannesburg and subsequently spent three years with Deloitte (United States) in numerous audit roles. He has also spent a number of years in corporates such as Presmed Healthcare and Deutsche Bank.

Lead Independent non-executive director

• BBusSc (Actuarial)
• Advanced Management Programme (Harvard Graduate School of Business)

Appointed: 1 August 2018

Committee Responsibilities: Chair of the remuneration committee and member of the nominations, mergers and acquisitions- and social, ethics and transformation committees

Thabo is a seasoned financial services leader with a demonstrable track record of excellence in driving strategy and transformation within blue-chip companies in South Africa and internationally. He was previously the CEO of Liberty Group Holdings, STANLIB and OMIGSA and chairman of the ASISA board. He has extensive knowledge and understanding of the challenges that face South Africa’s economic environment and has played various industry-wide roles to enable the businesses he has led to thrive and improve the trading environment for all industry players. In a career spanning nearly 30 years in insurance and asset management, he has led the development of industry-leading products (like the first income disability cover for professional rugby players in South Africa), launched new businesses (Symmetry, a multimanager), pioneered a new asset management operating model (Old Mutual Investment Group’s boutique asset management model) and championed the first B-BBEE transaction to include clients as empowerment partners (Old Mutual Education Trust). Thabo is the chairman of African Bank and Rand Mutual Assurance Group boards. He is also a non-executive director at Prescient Holdings, an executive director at Sithega Holdings and non-executive director at Family Insurance (Pty) Ltd, Legal Expenses Insurance Southern Africa Ltd and Legal Expenses Group Africa Ltd, which are subsidiaries of Sithega Holding Proprietary Limited.

Independent non-executive director

• CA
• Associate of the Chartered Insurance Institute
• Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Bankers
• MA (Politics, philosophy, economics)

Appointed: 1 January 2018

Committee Responsibilities: Chair of the mergers and acquisitions committee and member of the audit and risk committee

Bob has held senior leadership positions in a career spanning 30 years across the financial services industry in South Africa, North America and Europe. He has served as: special adviser to the commissioner of the South African Revenue Service; interim chief financial officer at South African Airways; chief executive officer of Old Mutual Wealth Management, finance director of Nedbank; joint founder of Egg (the first UK internet bank); the first chief executive of UK-based smile.co.uk (part of the Co-operative Bank); and chief executive officer of Skandia. He has been a director at Nedbank and Mutual & Federal, while he was the group director responsible for Old Mutual’s African businesses. He holds board membership as a non-executive director and chairman of the audit and risk committees of Personal Group Holdings plc, and as a non-executive director of Mirriad Advertising plc where he chairs the remuneration and audit committees.

Independent non-executive director

• BCom Hons
• CSb(SA)

Appointed: 9 November 2020

Committee Responsibilities: Chair of the social, ethics and transformation committee and member of the audit and risk committee

Andile is a chartered stockbroker and chair of Bidvest Bank Limited. He has over 20 years\\\' board experience as an executive and non-executive director across diverse industries. He previously, inter alia, served as chief executive officer of Rebosis Property Fund, The National Stokvel Association of South Africa and Barnard Jacobs Mellet. His non-executive positions have included chair of the JSE Limited\\\'s investment committee, its regulatory oversight committee and member of its audit, risk, human resources, social and ethics committees, as well as trustee of its educational fund. Andile is the former deputy chair of St Mary\\\'s Waverley and a former chair of Kearsney College.

Independent non-executive director

• CA(SA)
• BAccSC Hons

Appointed: 8 June 2022

Committee Responsibilities: Member of the audit and risk committee

Ndumi is a seasoned finance professional with over 27 years of experience, including experience in financial services (Discovery, Liberty Life and Nedbank), mining and energy (Sasol, Harmony Gold, Impala and Eskom), ICT (Telkom, Vodacom, MTN and Alviva Holdings) as well as retail experience (Italtile and Bata Shoes).

In March 2003, she co-founded Xabiso in the capacity of joint chief executive officer. In July 2008 she established Indyebo Inc., an audit, assurance and consulting business, in the capacity of owner, chief executive officer and director. She established new assurance service lines and developed client and service delivery practices. Her private sector portfolio included Discovery, Liberty, Sasol and Impala. Her public sector client portfolio included Telkom, Eskom, ACSA, NHLS, and City of Johannesburg. In 2017 she successfully merged Indyebo practice with Nexia SAB&T, and was appointed to the position of executive chairperson and partner. In March 2019, she joined Nedbank Group internal audit as chief operating officer.

Her non-executive portfolio to date, includes City Lodge (2006 to Present), Alviva Holdings (2014 – May 2019), Italtile (2016 – November 2019), Bata Shoes (2015 – 2018) and Etion (2015 – February 2019).

Independent non-executive director

• CA(SA)
• BCompt Hons (CTA)
• BSc (Medical Sciences)

Appointed: 1 July 2022

Committee Responsibilities: Member of the audit and risk committee

Nosipho is an experienced non-executive director and currently serves on: Engen Limited as director, audit committee chair and remuneration committee member; EOH Holdings Limited as director and member of the audit- and social and ethics committees, as well as chair of the information technology committee; Investec Property Fund Limited as director and audit committee chair;

MTN Group Limited as director and member of the audit, finance and investment and risk committees: University of Johannesburg council and audit committee chair.

She previously served on the joint board of Old Mutual Limited and Old Mutual Life Assurance Company South Africa Limited as well as boards of some of the MTN Group subsidiaries, namely MTN SA, MTN Uganda, MTN Rwanda, MTN Zambia and MTN Eswatini, among others.

Previous executive positions, include chief financial officer at the Financial Service Board, financial director at Zungu Investments Company Proprietary Limited and group financial executive at Viamax Proprietary Limited.

Non-executive director

• CA(SA)
• SEPA (Harvard Business School)

Appointed: 3 June 2020

Committee Responsibilities: Member of the social, ethics and transformation committee

Refiloe has over 16 years professional experience and 10 years board experience spread across diverse industries, including financial and property management services, mining services and supplies, tourism, automotive and engineering, where she has, inter alia, served as chairperson of finance committees and member of audit and risk committees. She is currently chief financial officer for African Rainbow Capital Proprietary Limited (ARC) and Ubuntu Botho Investments Proprietary Limited. Prior to her appointment at ARC, she spent five years as group financial director at Thebe Investment Corporation (Thebe) and prior to Thebe she was financial director at Royal Bafokeng Holdings.

Non-executive director
BCompt Honours and CTA in accounting and Bcom Accounting degrees and is a qualified Chartered Accountant (SA)

Appointed: 26 August 2022

Committee Responsibilities: Board member

She completed her articles at PricewaterhouseCoopers Incorporated (PwC) in 2006 after which she joined the PwC Corporate Finance Valuations team, where she was involved in the valuation of large unlisted companies across various sectors as well as intangible asset valuations under IAS 38. Marinda joined Alexforbes in 2008 as a Corporate Finance Manager. In the eight-year period at the Company she was responsible for managing the debt post the delisting and leveraging of the Group in 2007, as well as Group treasury and capital management. She was also involved in the disposal of certain non-core subsidiaries, which included large multi-national and cross border transactions. In 2014 she was responsible for the full restructure of the Group balance sheet and the listing of Alexforbes on the JSE Limited (JSE).

Marinda joined African Rainbow Capital Investments Limited (ARC) in 2017 as Deal Executive. She was responsible for the listing of ARC on the JSE in September 2017. Over the last 6 years, she has taken responsibility for the negotiation, structuring and implementation of several of the non-banking Financial Services investments in the ARC portfolio. She also has executive responsibility for the portfolio management of the non-banking Financial Services group, where she is a board member. Marinda also serves on the boards of QED Actuaries & Consultants Proprietary Limited and Capital Legacy Solutions Proprietary Limited. In addition, she has primary executive responsibility for the external funding and cash management across the wider ARC group. 

Non-executive director
Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Appointed: 26 August 2022

Committee Responsibilities: Board member and Group Nominations Committee member

Pavan is a financial services professional with more than 25 years of industry experience, primarily with General Electric, Standard Chartered Bank, HDB (HDFC Bank) and Prudential Financial Inc. (Prudential). He has initiated and implemented effective business models in India and China and built successful strategic partnerships, many from scratch. He has direct experience across retail asset and life insurance businesses and products with deep experience in driving and creating long-term value.

He is currently the Regional President, International Businesses of Prudential International Insurance (PII) with the overall responsibility of delivery of business results as well as building PII\\\'s presence in and its capabilities for success in select markets in Emerging Asia and Africa. He is also responsible for leading efforts around Business Development and mergers and acquisitions across all of Prudential’s Emerging Markets. Prior to this role, Pavan’s positions included Head of Strategy and Innovation for PII and Managing Director and CEO of Prudential’s life insurance joint venture in India. 

Non-executive director
Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Science (Actuarial Science), University of the Witwatersrand; Certified Actuary, Faculty of Actuaries in Scotland

Appointed: 26 August 2022

Committee Responsibilities: Board member and member to the Nominations-, Remuneration- and Mergers and Acquisitions committees

He is a Partner and co-founder of LeapFrog Investments, a private investment firm that invests in high-growth financial services and healthcare companies in emerging markets with over $2 billion in committed capital from global investors. He brings to Alexforbes over three decades of investing, operating and leadership experience across the African continent.

At LeapFrog, Gary is a member of the Management Board, an Investment Committee Member on all LeapFrog funds and Chief Operating Officer, overseeing operations, finance, legal, information technology and human resources functions globally. He also leads LeapFrog Strategic Africa Investments, the firm’s separate account with Prudential and heads up the South Africa office.  

Before joining LeapFrog as a member of the founding team, Gary co-founded Investment Solutions (now Alexander Forbes Investments Limited) and was also joint Managing Director of Alexander Forbes Financial Services. He also serves as vice-chairman of the Jewish Helping Hand, a leading non-profit social services organisation.