Finance Monthly Global Awards 2022 South Africa 18 www.finance-monthly.com Howhaveyou seenTenacitygrow anddevelopsince its foundingas a subsidiaryof thePepkorGroup in 2007? What began in June 2007 with a small team and a vision to help retailers grow customer loyalty and improve relationships with their credit customers has grown in leaps and bounds. We have increased our initial debtors’ book from R15 million in the early days to R3.5 billion, grown our turnover to R4.5 billion, and today we serve over 1.5 million customers at six retailers across four countries! Indeed, we have become one of the Pepkor Group’s best-performing companies. All of our cards carry the A+ logo on them, which indicates interoperability at all our stores. The retailers generally refer to their in-store card as an ‘APlus’ card. The past 15 years have been an exciting journey, and while I am extremely pleased about what we have achieved to date, it is the people who made this journey possible that I ammost proud of. None of our successes would have been realised without the hard work, commitment, passion, perseverance and tenacity of the people that make up our organisation. Inwhatways has this growth enhanced the skills andcareer development of yourself andyour team? As the company has grown, we have increased the management team from the original three founding members to an executive of eight, managing the in-store credit portfolio, as well as managing a personal loans business (Capfin), extending loans to our retail clients. The executive team have been at the organisation for over seven years and have grown tremendously in that time. Some of the team have changed portfolios while remaining part of the executive, a testament to their versatility and cross-organisational strength. Tenacity has proved a valuable asset to Pepkor, which opened the opportunity to house the personal lending business with the team and allowed us to grow in the payment and lending space within Pepkor. How isTenacity’sworkwithcredit programs helping toenhance financial services throughout Africa? We believe in an inclusive credit approach. For many South Africans, their in-store credit card is their first entry into the credit market. We are conservative in our approach but believe in supporting our customers to build a credit record for themselves and make the unaffordable affordable. We operate in the lower LSM market and believe in a ‘low-to-grow’ strategy, meaning that where we are uncertain of the risk of a client, we
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