While the proportion of black people working at all management levels is growing steadily in SA’s banking sector, albeit behind the Financial Sector Code’s targets, the number of black women executive directors is still only a fraction of what is envisioned.

According to the 2022 Transformation in Banking Report, commissioned by the Banking Association SA (Basa) and produced by independent research house Intellidex, only 16% of the 19 banks that participated in the research conducted for the period 2017 to 2020, exceeded the 25% target when it came to the proportion of black women executive directors at board level. 

BASA MD Bongiwe Kunene said on Monday at the release of the report that its findings showed there was still much work to do to speed up the rate of transformation when it came to black women executive directors.

In terms of overall transformation targets in banking, Kunene said “in the context of Covid we are not too disappointed because Covid put the brakes on many things”.

For example, she said banks’ profits were significantly affected during the peak of the Covid-19 period covered by the report, which meant any transformation measure that required banks to spend would have been affected.

Overall though, the report, which aims to reflect the progress banks have made towards achieving the empowerment targets set out in the Financial Sector Code, showed there was an “increase in the total number of black managers across all management levels”, with black top senior level managers growing 23%, senior managers 8%, middle 4% and junior 0.6%.

However, this was still behind target.

For example at top senior level, the report showed 43% of these managers were black,  almost 17% below the Financial Sector Code target of 60%. In the next category after that, senior managers, 45.2% were black against a target of 60%. At middle management level, 67% were black against a target of 75%, while banks showed the most progress at junior management level with 87% of these managers being black, compared with a target of 88%.

Where banks excelled was at achieving the targets for voting rights. 

The report said: “Black ownership of banks was slightly above target with black people holding 28.4% of voting rights in banks, against a target of 25%.”

Khulekani Mathe, who heads the financial inclusion division of Basa, said this 25% target has been achieved by the banking sector over the past several years.

“For the rest, we are moving gradually towards the targets.”

However, the overall black economic interest in the banking sector was 23.6%, slightly below the target of 25%. 

The report said the “black ownership of banks was likely to continue to drift down as bank BEE deals have vested and black investors are now free to sell their shares and benefit from their profits”.

It said: “banks continued to meet many of the empowerment and transformation targets set in the Financial Sector Code, despite the severe economic contraction of -6,4% experienced in 2020, which reduced opportunities for job creation and inclusive economic growth.”  ​

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