Alewyn Burger

Initially following an academic career lecturing Mathematical Statistics, Alewyn’s career in banking started in 1979 where he was employed as a statistician and operations researcher at the United Building Society in SA. Moving through various general management levels, Alewyn was appointed executive director of the United Group (which became ABSA in 1991) in early 1990, with responsibility for group management services, technology and research.

Following the ABSA merger in 1993 he fulfilled various executive positions, ending as group executive director on the main board accountable for all of the ABSA commercial bank, infrastructure, and IT in 1998 when he resigned. Alewyn played a major role in the ABSA merger, both as the business project manager as well as the project manager and sponsoring executive of the massive information technology project that merged the 7 ABSA IT systems into a single integrated operation. He also acted as group CIO 1984-1997.

He joined Standard Bank in 2001 in Personal and Business Banking, initially as head of self-service channels. Operations and IT was added to his portfolio as an SA- focussed executive before his focus shifted to the rest-of-Africa banks of Standard Bank.

From 2006 to September 2008 he had a simultaneous portfolio of:

• Chief Operating Officer for Standard Bank Africa , accountable for operations, IT, finance, human resources, bank acquisition integration, planning and strategy, and the retail and card business for all the Standard Banks in the rest of Africa, including Africa payments.
• Global Chief Technology Officer (PBB) including, strategy, architecture, software and hardware development, projects and service delivery, and research and development.

From October 2008 until his retirement from the bank in mid 2011, he focussed only on Africa with key focus to develop a low cost banking capability for PBB Africa. His portfolio to execute this mandate included the Sponsoring of the Core Banking Replacement Programme, Payments, Remittances and Mobile payments, Self service Channels and Financial Inclusion businesses across Africa. He was also Regional Managing Director of Standard Bank Namibia and served on the board of directors of Stanbic IBTC PLC, the bank subsidiary in Nigeria. In addition to the above he assisted the Africa CIO to coordinate IT priorities into business priorities as well as chairing the bank channel investment forum. Lastly he was the sponsoring group executive of the Beyond Payments division of the bank, which is the business R&D division building seed businesses in the Payments domain (especially card and mobile).

In 2010 and 2011 he was a key member of the team that coordinated and articulated the grouprategy regarding mobile banking and mobile payments and was accountable for the mobile business in the rest of Africa, including the partnership with MTN on Mobile Money in the region.

Alewyn was recognised for his contribution over the years by the ICT industry in 2003 as the “ICT Leader of the Year”, the first award of its kind in the industry.

Alewyn played an active role in the international card industry activities and was at various times a member of the Maestro and Cirrus global operations committee, also a board member of the VISA Central & Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa Region, and a member of the Global Board of Directors of MAESTRO International.

He was the Chairman of the Payment Association of SA during 1996 to 1998, as well as the Clearing Bankers Association in 1997 and played a major role in the set-up of the National Payment System, which regulates the payment industry in SA.

Alewyn served as a member of the global SAP Banking Advisory Board as well as the CIO advisory board of Accenture Europe ( 2005 -2008). Other board memberships on behalf of the bank are Integrated Process Solutions (a JV between ABSA and Standard Bank in SA for cheque processing). Alewyn is a visiting professor at the Graduate School of the University of Stellenbosch from 2000, teaching IT management and Operations to MBA students. He was also an extraordinary Professor at University of Pretoria (1996 to 2006).

Formal Qualifications are MSc (RAU 1974), Ph.D (UNISA 1981), AEP (UNISA SBL 1986), AMP (Harvard Business School, 1991).

Currently Alewyn is contracted to PWC part-time in the PWC Advisory division, focussing on FS and Technical Advisory work. He is also non-executive Chairman of IZAZI Solutions, a company that specializes in the implementation of core banking components and systems for banks and FS institutions internationally, with a particular skill in SAP banking systems.