Letshego Holdings Limited continues to fortify its footprint on the African continent as a leader in providing simple, appropriate and inclusive financial products to its customers across Africa. To ensure this, Letshego has announced the appointment of Mr. Noel Marimira to head the Group’s Risk function. Letshego delves deep into harnessing top minds in the business, to bring the best out of the Letshego family to the benefit of all its stakeholders.
“When we choose our management, we look for people who will inspire the team with a clear vision of the direction we should be heading towards, and we stand to benefit a lot from Noel in this regard. He comes with significant experience in developing risk frameworks from inception and has important experience in working across multi-country operations, which is a key skill required at the Letshego Group as we expand our footprint in Africa,” said Letshego Holdings Limited Group Managing Director, Chris Low.
Marimira arrives focused on establishing an enterprise risk management framework and standards for the Group, in order to provide quality advice and services relevant to its internal and external stakeholders with a special focus on customers’ needs. Marimira announced that his first focus area will be to review and enhance the existing risk methodologies at Letshego to build a single, Group-wide framework which will support its value and growth transformation strategy, and beyond.
“We have grown into a Pan-African establishment with a customer base of over 265,000,” said Low. “This means that our community has expanded considerably, with customers coming from increasingly diverse cultures across Africa, with dynamic interests and needs, which evolve over time. Our customers require our services to accommodate their growth aspirations as they are right now; in addition, they also rely on us to provide solid counsel that will assist them with using our solutions for sustainable growth that yield benefits for their livelihoods in the long run. Agility and pan-African thinking and action are principles we breathe, live, and practice for us to serve our customers. To keep up with our customers as they grow and succeed, we invest, wholeheartedly, in our most vital resource, which is our people. With Noel, we are confident that we made the best choice,” Low said.
Marimira has over 24 years of banking experience, of which 13 years have been in risk management for banking, micro finance and financial service sectors. Marimira has headed risk functions at several financial organisations including Stanbic Bank Botswana, BancABC Botswana, FBC Holdings and Afrasia Holdings. In addition to this, Noel assisted in formulating the roll-out and implementation strategy for these institutions. He is an Associate of the Institute of Bankers (Zimbabwe) and a holder of a Masters in Business Administration (MBA), a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA), and a Bachelor of Commerce (B.Com) in Risk Management.
Low notes that the Group’s success lies in continuously evaluating stronger ways to bring more to its customers. “We aim to continuously strengthen ourselves as a team because we understand that we play a vital role in the lives of our customers. We as the Letshego team trust that Noel’s experience and heart for seeing African business leaders play a bigger role in the direction of the continent’s economies will steer us into providing the best services on financial risk and assurance. Moreover, we look forward to making the next major strides needed to become an even stronger financial services provider, and friend, to our customers when they need it most.”
Marimira’s appointment comes on the back of a number of strategic appointments across the Group. In Namibia, this includes the appointment of Ms. Chriszelda Muenjo and Chief Risk Officer, helping lead the charge in the Risk function as the Namibian operation readies for its banking transformation. Further, Mr. Joao Machalela has been appointed Chief Risk Officer in the Mozambican market, in preparation for Letshego’s Mozambican transformation into a full commercial bank in terms of licensing. The appointments come as Letshego strengthens the team behind driving its strategy as a leading financial services provider on the continent.