Michiel Le Roux is a billionaire businessman and banker from South Africa. In 2001, he established the Capitec Bank, and he served as the company’s CEO right up until 2004.
After that, he assumed the role of Chairman of the Board, a position he held from 2007 until 2016. And ever since that time, has continued to serve as a board member while holding approximately 11% of the bank’s stake.
Before that, he served as the CEO of Boland Bank, a modest regional bank located in the suburbs of Cape Town, for a period of four years. Michiel is a successful banker overall, and he is particularly well-known for his role in reviving the South African banking industry with the help of his Capitec Bank.
In the Beginning
The 20th of May, 1949 saw the arrival of Michiel Scholtz du Pre Le Roux. He obtained an LLB degree in Stellenbosch. In spite of the fact that he had studied law, Roux never actually worked in the field because he thought it was dull.
He had been employed by Distillers Corp, but he left the company in the middle of the 1990s in order to launch a banking enterprise with the assistance of Christio Wiese, who was an entrepreneur and the director of Pep Stores.
After that, for the subsequent four years prior to his departure, he served as the manager of a modest regional bank known as Boland Bank. Ned Bank was formed as a result of a merger between Boland Bank and NBS in 1998, BoE Holdings Limited in 1999, Nedcor in 2002, and finally Ned Bank in 2004.
Capitec Bank
Michiel Le Roux established the Capitec Bank on March 1, 2001, and he currently holds approximately 11% of the company’s shares. The retail bank that serves South Africa’s growing middle class became publicly traded on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) on February 18, 2002. Its primary clientele is the country’s growing middle class.
The activities of Capitec Bank are centered on simplifying banking for customers and giving them more agency over their own financial situation. Customers have access to the integrated credit facility, transaction account, and savings account that is known as the Global One account.
Additionally, the company’s business model is centered on providing value to its customer(s) by facilitating low-cost transactions, allowing customers the flexibility to pay for their purchases as they go, and providing the highest interest rate possible on deposits.
According to the financial results of the bank for the year 2018, the bank serves more than 10 million active customers, operates more than 800 branches, employs more than 13,000 people, and maintains shareholder funds totaling R19 billion.
The international banking Advisory Group Lafferty’s inaugural 2016 Bank Quality Rankings ranked Capitec bank as the top financial institution in the entire world. In addition to this, the Solidarity Research Institute (SRI) Bank Charges Report for 2015 ranked it as South Africa’s most affordable financial institution.
A Prize And An Acknowledgement
Michiel le Roux was awarded an honorary doctorate of commerce (DComm) by the University of Stellenbosch in the year 2015. This was a direct consequence of his revolutionary efforts to revitalize the banking industry in South Africa through the creation of a novel banking system that caters to the requirements of the population with lower incomes.
Entrepreneurial Lessons From Michiel Le Roux
Michiel shared some of his life beliefs and how he has been able to achieve success as a result of those beliefs in an interview with Forbes. For instance, he described how everyone worked in love despite the absence of a distinct divide between the role of the boss and that of the employer. “At Capitec, they don’t joke around when it comes to the basics. Even the security guard at the front gate calls him Michiel, and the receptionist makes lighthearted jokes about his sense of style or lack thereof. There are no suits, and the CEO’s office is the same size as everyone else’s. The CEO shares a personal assistant, and there are no personalized parking spots.
According to Le Roux, the beginning point is not money but rather confidence in oneself and the conviction that one can accomplish something worthwhile. According to him, a large number of young people who have the potential to be entrepreneurs use a lack of financial resources as an excuse.
Additionally, he is of the opinion that attempting to complete the task by one’s lonesome is not nearly as beneficial as practicing effective management and having a capable team to complete the task. He explained how his idea was developed further by their colleague Stassen, who was able to make it into what it is today. Riaan Stassen was not only the one who came up with the concept; he also helped carry it out.
