The man who went from rural KZN to running a R390 billion bank
Simphiwe “Sim” Tshabalala has com a long way from rural KwaZulu-Natal to running South Africa’s biggest bank (when measuring capital) which manages R3.1 trillion in assets and has a market cap of nearly R390 billion.
Tshabalala describes his journey as a “classic South African story”.
He was born in 1967 in Hlabisa, a low-income area in rural KwaZulu-Natal. He and his family then moved to Gauteng, where he grew up in Soweto and attended Sacred Heart College in Johannesburg.
His parents worked hard to send him to a mostly white private Catholic school in the Johannesburg suburbs during the era of apartheid.
He describes how inspired he was by his parent’s work ethic, which guided him for years to come. “My parents were enterprising, so I have to doff my hat to my late father and my mother” Tshabalala recalled in an interview with the Harvard business School.
His farther owned a fried chicken company that he had designed himself and his mother was a nurse.
“I had no real [initial] interest in finance,” Tshabalala recalled in a Daily Investor Smart Money interview, having a keen interest in law – particularly human rights law.
He attended Rhodes University, where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1988 and a Bachelor of Laws in 1990. After completing his articles at Bowman Gilfillan (now Bowmans), he went on to do a Master of Laws at Notre Dame in the United States, which he was awarded summa cum laude in 1993.
Tshabalala was admitted as an attorney of the High Court of South Africa in 1994. He joined Real Africa Durolink Investment Bank in 1994 and worked in its structured finance division until 2000.
At that time, he continued his studies on a part-time basis and completed the Higher Diploma in Taxation Law from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1996.
However, his stint in law was short-lived. “I always wanted to be a human rights lawyer, but I actually didn’t realise that it takes a particular temperament to be a good lawyer. So while I love law, I really didn’t love the practice,” said Tshabalala.
He said that one learns in law that you “have to become expert very quickly in things that you were never taught; so a great litigator, for example, will become an expert at banking when they’re litigating a banking issue.”
So, the “things I learned in law, I’ve applied in the gentle art of banking,” he added.
By the turn of the millennium, Tshabalala was headhunted by former banking bigwig at Standard Bank, David Munro.
However, at the time, Nedcor was attempting a hostile takeover of Standard Bank Investment Corporation (Stanbic), a move that initially made Tshabalala hesitant to move.
When former Finance Minister Trevor Manual refused permission for the takeover, Tshabalala’s nerves eased.
He joined Standard Bank in 2000, where he served in many positions while making his way to the top.
When joining, these were unchartered waters for him. “When I joined Standard Bank, I was an outsider in the sense that here is a ‘failed lawyer’ trying to become a banker and my colleagues still wonder how I’ve managed that,” said Tshabalala.
“In fact, I also I didn’t play golf and yet I’ve managed to climb way up the ranks,” he jokingly added.
While he initially thought that him having a different skillset from the world of banking would hinder him, he said that this was actually one of his greatest strengths as the competitiveness of an organisation hinges on the diverse array of skill sets that it has.
“I’m different I’m an outsider; I’m not an engineer, I’m not an accountant, and indeed I’m not part of the ‘dismal science’ as I didn’t do economics (what he knows in this regard is self-taught).”
“But importantly, I think I had the set of skills and values that were consistant with the organisation,” added Tshabalala.
He started out as the head of structured finance for the Project Finance Division of Standard Bank’s Standard Corporate and Merchant Bank (SCMB) in 2000, before becoming a director that same year.
Tshabalala became the Managing Director of Stanbic Africa in 2001. Stanbic Africa is the name Standard Bank uses for its operations in some parts of Africa to avoid confusion with UK-based lender Standard Chartered.
He was appointed the chief executive of Personal and Business Banking for the group’s South African operations in 2006, and completed Harvard’s Advanced Management Programme in the same year.
Two years later, he was appointed the CEO of Standard Bank South Africa, shortly before becoming a deputy CEO for the Standard Bank Group.
Within two years, Tshabalala was appointed CEO of Standard Bank South Africa, the group’s most significant operating unit, and one of three Deputy CEOs of Standard Bank Group.
In 2012, he took on additional responsibility for Corporate and Investment Banking (CIB) in South Africa.
In 2013, Tshabalala became a joint chief executive of the Standard Bank Group alongside Ben Kruger, and finally took the reins as the group’s sole CEO in 2017.
He describes this period of getting to the top as “one of the most interesting and painful periods” in his life “listening to people that didn’t know much about banking and Standard Bank having strong views about how to run Standard Bank.”
However, this just proved as extra motivation to prove his naysayers wrong.
Under Tshabalala’s leadership, African operations have significantly increased their contribution to the bank’s earnings. In the most recent financial year, Africa accounted for 27% of Standard Bank’s net asset value but contributed 42% to its headline earnings.
This is a dramatic rise from a decade ago when African regions contributed only 12% to headline earnings.
The Standard Bank Group recorded headline earnings of R42.9 billion for the 12 months to 31 December 2023 (FY23), up 27% on the prior year (FY22) and delivered a return on equity of 18.8%.
The bank also increased its brand value by 12.4% in the last year, which places Standard Bank as first in Africa and 138th in the world, up 12 places from 145th in 2023.
Standard Bank was recently ranked as the most valuable banking brand in Africa in 2024, the third consecutive year that it has ranked first in Africa Brand Finance’s annual ranking of the world’s Top 500 Banking Brands.
In addition to the bank’s accolade, Tshabalala has been listed as one of the 10 Top Bank CEOs in the 2024 Brand Finance Brand Guardianship Index. This has not gone overlooked, with him earning a cool R83.3 million in 2023.
He also serves on the Institute of International Finance board, where he is vice-chairman and treasurer.
He is a Fellow of the Institute of Bankers of South Africa and an Honorary Professor at the Stellenbosch University Business School
Inspired by his parents’ strong work ethic and spiritual teachings from his school years, Sim went from Hlabisa in KwaZulu-Natal, to leading an institution with a R387.6 billion market cap.
Read: The South African media mogul who started out with R60 and became a multi-millionaire
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