Excellence in leadership in Africa 2020: Absa

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented change to the way that business is carried out in Africa. For those banks central to supply-chain management and trade finance, the need to maintain the flow of food, essential goods and personal protection equipment despite border closures is critical.

To facilitate this, Absa’s transaction banking team has processed 84 trade and working capital transactions at a value of R46 billion ($3 billion) since the start of the lockdown.

The bank’s chief executive is Daniel Mminele.

It has also radically changed the way these deals are run. Many parts of trade finance are manual, but the bank has consulted on and applied digital solutions to many parts of this process, easing bottlenecks without compromising security protocols.

It also supports growth sectors deemed essential services by deploying special task teams. A total of R33.7 billion of financing was approved to support these businesses.