Blue Chip Issue 90

INVESTMENT | Leadership
BLUE
CHIP
Congratulations on your appointment as CEO of Momentum
Investments. How do you feel about this opportunity?
I have been privileged to spend 30 years in various roles at the
Momentum Metropolitan Group, with three years in Zurich and the
last 13 years in London. It has given me a wealth of experience in and
exposure to the investment industries both locally and internationally.
This new role will be an opportunity for me to plough back
some of the experience I have built up courtesy of the Group, and
to use the exposure I have had to guide our business during its
next growth phase and take it forward. There’s much that we can
do and should do in a fast-paced, changing world.
I look forward to leading the Momentum Investments team
on this journey and helping build collective dreams into reality.
What is your objective in your new role?
We are a people’s business. We have an excellent team of people
in the various Momentum Investments businesses in the Group,
both in South Africa and the UK.
My immediate objective will be to solidify the foundation that
was laid under Jeanette Marais’s leadership over the last five
years and to build on this to set ourselves up for a sustainable
global future.
One of my key objectives is to develop a truly global perspective
in our business so that we deliver an international set of capabilities
to our clients and advisor base.
Our clients increasingly invest offshore and when they trust
us with investing their money, we must do so in a well-balanced
manner in opportunities across the world to ensure the best riskadjusted
outcomes for them. To do so, we need to have global reach
and capabilities. Given my tenure in London for the past decade, I
can help focus our business to truly have a global mindset.
Career history
Ferdi van Heerden joined Momentum Global Investment
Management (MGIM) in 2010 after serving three years as CEO
of a start-up insurance venture in Switzerland. He has held
several senior executive positions in Momentum Metropolitan
Holdings Limited (MMH) and the FirstRand Group, both listed
companies on the JSE. During his career of circa 30 years
with these Groups, his responsibilities included heading up
Momentum’s individual life operation, the private pension
fund administration business, as well as FirstRand’s consumer
banking division.
Ferdi has 35+ years of experience in the life insurance and
investment industries in South Africa, the UK and Europe.
What is Momentum Investments’ unique selling proposition?
For us, it is always about people which is captured in our tagline:
“With us, investing is personal”. It is as much about the customer
journey as it is about the customer’s investment outcome.
Therefore, we make it our business to understand the individual
needs of our advisor partners and clients so that we can help them
achieve what they set out to do.
As a Group, our stated objective is to help individuals and
businesses achieve their financial objectives. We try to make it
easier for them to invest with confidence and secondly to stay
invested. Our unique selling proposition in a nutshell is our people,
our culture as well as our attitude to partnerships and business.
In my view, a challenge equals an
opportunity if you are proactive.
Please outline Momentum Investments’ investor capabilities
locally and offshore.
Given the breadth of our capabilities, this could be a conversation
on its own. But let me summarise it in three buckets. First, in
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