Having a bank account has become a fundamental prerequisite for having a life and participating in society around the world. In my quest for a bank account in South Africa, I met Gretchen Marais from imaliexpress – a South African Fintech – who is well aware of what her true service to society is and who get’s stuff done to get there. A few weeks ago I sat with her to listen to her story. Here is what I learned.
I met Gretchen in Paarl, at the 10th Anniversary function of the Foundation for Communities of Excellence. We hit it off immediately, talking about anything under the sun. She struck me as not only an incredibly kind person, but also someone who is wise beyond her 30-something years and equipped with a laser-focused business acumen. So I wanted to know more about the story behind this intriguing combination.
Gretchen is a business developer for imaliexpress, (a South African Fintech and part of the Finex Group of companies) that offers highly innovative products, such as a Cash Passport (a multi-currency debit card), company solutions for handling travel allowances for employees, or voucher based debit and foreign exchange services that can also be white-labelled by clients. In doing all of this, they also find banking solutions for the unbanked.
Gretchen has been working for the Finex Group founded by her father for 10 years now. Although having grown up in a business-minded family, she never saw herself going into the corporate space. Let alone the financial industry. Thus, she went to study youth work at the University of Stellenbosch, where she learned a great deal about social empowerment: “I learned a lot about how to work with people. How they are structured, the way people think. About people’s behaviours and where they come from. Why they act the way they do?”
After graduation, and in spite of herself, she joined the Finex Group, starting off in the HR department. It turned out to be the perfect place to start off for someone who’s first interest is in human beings: “I kind of found my love for HR. The recruitment line is a very special field. You learn a lot about people and the industry. About different personality types and ways of thinking, and about how to position individuals into different positions in the company depending on their personality.”
After several years in HR, she joined the Finance department of Finex, where she acquired essential knowledge but was also happy to hand over after three years, because, as she says: “It’s not a people thing.”
“Our products are empowerment tools”
With the acquisition of imaliexpress to the Group, Gretchen joined as a business developer there. A space where she is obviously thriving: “The knowledge that I have, the people skills that I learned in HR, all of this really helps me in the market. It helps me build the relationships I need to have in the sales environment and have different conversations with different personality types. The most exciting part for me about my job at the moment is being involved with our people on the ground and customers in the field. Learning how the customers operate their ways of living, how they manage their finances, how they get their finances from one country to another, and how it’s so flippant difficult for them to just receive and send money from and to their homes if they are foreigners living in South Africa.”
In doing what she is doing, Gretchen does not segment clients according to their income brackets. It does not matter to her as to whether she is speaking with a lady who’s boss refuses to pay her salary before she has a bank account, a gardener from Zimbabwe who wants to send money to his family back home, or to a “newly arrived” from Europe who needs to find her ways in becoming a member of the South African society and business community. “It doesn’t matter to me at all”, says Gretchen. “We are all the same. I don’t care where your house is situated.” All that is relevant to her is finding solutions based on what clients are really struggling with: “Our products are empowerment tools.”
Such as the Cash Passport, or a voucher based remittance system that helps under-age recipients of funds in the account owners home country to responsibly manage the funds that are sent to them (75% of the recipients of funds sent from South Africa to other African countries are children at the age of 18 or younger).
“You have to actually listen to your customer”
The ideation process that finally leads to these solutions is grounded in real life experience, i.e. fed by the information that is brought in from the field or that comes in from clients contacting the Customer Service Centre. “You have to actually listen to your customer”, says Gretchen. “They are the ones using the product daily. So they would be the ones who know it best.”
Thanks to flat hierarchies, the information gathered goes directly to the Sales Manager, who is also the Operations manager and a member of the ExCo, where final decisions are taken. As these conversations happen in weekly meetings, reactions can be very timely and close to the market.
The results of this process are products and solutions that can be explained to potential clients in three sentences. Such as when Gretchen went on a field trip, and, when looking for a bathroom, got chatting with the owner of a tiny store who asked Gretchen what she was doing. Just three sentences into that conversation, the lady wanted to have a debit card. Just as did the gardener Gretchen got into a conversation with when visiting a school. “Take the remittance app. We keep it simple”, Gretchen explains. “Because, why do you need to have all these fancy features, when you just want a simple feature to work.”
“If your mind is scattered, your decisions are”
Keeping things simple for clients ties in with her values, which are the same in her private and her business life. Such as being respectful of people’s precious time, and contributing towards positivity in people’s lives: “If you want to make a deal with me just to feed off of people and gain something out of them, I do not want to do business with you. Because, how are we going to live long, if we eat of each other where we should actually feed one other?”
Asked about what brings her most joy apart from empowering her clients, she says: “What gives me joy in life? Definitely my family, I have two beautiful kids. And yeah, music, I absolutely love music. And I think what keeps me centred is my relationship with God. Life can throw you in different directions. So it’s important to always find your equanimity. And to know where to get that fast. Quiet time is important. As is reading and being out in nature. I think that is what keeps us alive and makes life beautiful.” According to her experience, operating from this position of equanimity has a positive influence on decision making: if your mind is scattered, your decisions are. When it’s calm and composed though, your decisions reflect that as well.
“Looking for God in everything means looking for the good in everything.”
Just like that, we effortlessly slide into a little conversation about God and the importance of faith in her private and business life. “My relationship with God has an effect on everything I do. And I think the biggest thing is discernment”, Gretchen explains. “I always pray for discernment on which deals to take, which deals not to take. I think about the Holy Spirit as a kind of best friend to have by your side. Your little voice telling you when something’s not sitting right with you and trusting in what some people call intuition. For me, intuition is based on my relationship with the Holy Spirit. It’s about meditation and quiet time. In the last analysis, it’s about understanding that everything is connected.”
According to Gretchen, looking for God in everything means being present and looking for the good in everyone and everything. It means operating from the basic assumption that people are generally good, even if individual experiences might sometimes suggest differently.
Thus, when asked what she wishes for her business and her country, it comes as no surprise that people and connection play a big role in both: “My biggest wish for my company would be that people could understand the value of what we really offer. Namely, that it is truly sustainable in the sense of it always changing, adapting towards what the people need and want. My biggest wish for this country is that we can truly start cross-trading with each other.” When Gretchen speaks about cross-trading, she means different businesses helping each other out, cooperating and also referring customers to providers that can serve them if your company cannot. It struck me that this is a very different concept from one-directional cross-selling. “Well, I wish all of that could happen”, she says in closing. “But, you know, it is already happening. Slowly but surely, everything will fall into place. If we keep looking at the good things, good things will come. For our business and for the country.”