Stephen Vlok : South African banker in Paradise Island

After a fruitful career in South Africa, Stephen Vlok accepts the challenge to work in the banking sector in Mauritius. There, he leads a major business unit for Bank One.

Since 2014, Stephen Vlok, 45 years, holds the position of Chief Risk Officer at Bank One. This South African gentleman turns to be a discreet professional, with a passion for surfing. “I prefer to be in a surfing outfit rather than in a suit”, he confides. A kind-hearted man with an enthu-siastic smile, Stephen Vlok has had a successful career in the financial sector thanks to his humanly approach. Notwithstanding his aptitude for figures, he is bestowed with an inherent desire to improve the lives of others. This is what encouraged him to take the banking path.

This father of two children – Chris, 23 years, and Emma-Jayne, 4 months old and proudly born in Mauritius – holds a B.Com undergraduate degree from Rhodes University, where he is graduated with four majors: Management, Economics, Commercial Law and Information Systems. The Institute of Bankers of South Africa then conferred him an Associate Diploma of the Institute. After that, he completed a postgraduate degree, which is a Master’s Degree specializing in Financial Management from the University of Cape Town.

His professional career star-ted with the First National Bank (FNB) on their Executive Trainee program. “I spent eleven and a half years with FNB where my last position was Credit Mana-ger for large corporates in Cape Town,” he said. His next step was joining the investment ban-king arm of a large South African life insurer. There he spent eight and a half years and his last position was Deputy Head of Credit.

In 2014, he was given the opportunity to work in Mauritius. The proposal came from Bank One. He accepted the job and joined the bank in November as Chief Risk Officer. “It was a great opportunity to utilize my skills and qualifications to assist a fresh executive team to take the bank to new heights,” he emphasizes, adding with a big smile that he could not resist the opportunity to live and work in this “paradise”.

As Chief Risk Officer, his duty is to look at all risk aspects of the bank, including credit risk, operational risk, market risk and reputational risk. But his main focus is the credit risk aspect and also the responsibility to strategically guide the Collections and Recovery Team. “The embedding of an effective risk culture is a key task to be established via proper communication with all team members throughout the bank. The Risk Support Teams need to add value in their interactions with business units so that the best interests of the bank are protected at all times,” he explains.

His vision for his risk department has always been to build empowered teams in organizations in which his skills are utilized in. “There must be effective and continuous communication between business units and risk teams. The latter are no longer just ‘policemen with large sticks’ and an impediment to business. Risk teams are business enablers that add value to ensure that the risks and rewards are equitable for sustainable success of the bank,” he adds. Thus, constructive challenge of the status quo and effective debate should be strongly encouraged to harness the latent available talent within the team members of Bank One.

Sharing his experience of the banking sector in South Africa, the CRO of Bank One points out that it is driven by five major banks which operate in a competitive environment. “One of the leading banks in South Africa is also driving the business model to be completely digitalized and the use of cheques, standing orders is virtually non-existent,” he said.

Internet banking and banking via mobile apps have become the norms for most bank clients, from consumer to corporate. Thus, clients never have to enter a branch to do their banking and, as such, the cost base of the bank is declining rapidly as branches are closed whilst still maintaining quality service. He adds that in larger corporate space, there is a lot of bank disintermediation from the investment banking arms of the large insurers.

However, South Africans are highly indebted and so there is a great amount of financial strain on the majority of the population. Thus, the credit records of the majority of the financially active consumer clients are under stress, Stephen Vlok reveals. In addition, there is a significant part of the population that remains unbanked mainly in vast rural regions within South Africa. This is a challenge for the government and financial services sector.

Unlike South Africa, in Mauritius, there is a larger chunk of the population which is more financial literate. But we lag behind when it comes to digital banking. Besides, we are far from becoming a cashless society, he observes. On the regulatory front, Mauritius and South Africa are on equal footing: both countries are adopting Basel III and IFRS 9.