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Global Fintech Entrepreneur

Dave Van Niekerk

About Dave

Dave has more than 20 years of banking, microfinance, corporate and executive management experience. He is well known in the Pan African business space for founding MyBucks, a fintech company operating in 13 countries in Africa, Europe and Australia.

He was the founder and previous CEO of the company Blue Financial Services, a microlender operating in 14 countries with a turnover of R700 million and a loan book size of roughly 400 Million USD in 2009.

He is an accomplished, visionary entrepreneur, being quoted in the South African Business Day as being “SA’s own Branson” (15 May 2008). With wide practical experience in strategic and operational management, change management, financial management and control in all strategic and operational issues.

Global Fintech Entrepreneur

Dave sunk his teeth into the microfinance industry when he joined Unity Financial Services in 1997. Thereafter, he became a shareholder and the Operational Director of Unity Financial Services (Pty) Limited. The shareholding of Unity was later sold to Sanlam, Theta and Boland Bank. Eventually, 100% was sold to Theta investments, which already owned the controlling share in microfinance companies – King and Altfin. Subsequently, Unity, King and Altfin were merged with the previous African Bank flag under the New African Bank brand and Theta then changed its listed name to African Bank Investments Limited.

Dave went on to hold senior management positions in African Bank until he left in 2001 to start Blue Financial Services, where he remained as CEO until 2009. In 2010 he’s experience allowed him to privately consult various financial firms, some of which are listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and aided them in raising capital, funding new sources of revenue, forming symbiotic business relationships and innovative channels for business growth.

Companies

Awards

FinTech Campus

Designed by Dave Van Niekerk

  • A fully serviced P-grade professional office space environment.

  • The Fintech Campus was established in September 2017.

  • FinTech Campus has a unique design, built to the highest standard

  • Boardrooms and a 62 seater auditorium

Articles


African Business

Interview with Dave Van Niekerk, MyBucks CEO

For Dave Van Niekerk, the founder of MyBucks, fintech is filling a huge void – the space left by the legacy banks that have inadvertently perpetuated Africa’s lack of financial inclusion.

“In the African space in which we play, there is going to be a lot of room for traditional players for many years to come,” he says. “But Africa has got a very high cost of data, and that has always been a barrier to entry to many people trying to access financial services.

“However the smartphone is showing substantial penetration, and that is allowing fintech to be adopted, accessing lending services, banking, insurance, etc.” In fact, there are already over 362m smartphone users in Africa and the smartphone market is expected almost double to over 720m users, by 2020.

At the moment, MyBucks is in 13 African countries (as well as three European countries and Australia) and predominantly offers banking, loans, insurance, money transfer services, credit tools and budgeting tools. “If you put money in, you can bank with us, we can lend to you, we can insure you, we can provide you with various services and tools. And we have developed a number of algorithms or artificial intelligence (AI) services that support our activities,” Van Niekerk explains.

Among the AI tools MyBucks has in its technology armoury is Dexter, which detects and prevents fraud by building digital identities of clients according to their online behaviour. Since May 2017, this tool has identified more than 65,000 client actions as potentially fraudulent. MyBucks’ proprietary AI programme, Jessie, provides a credit scoring function, determining what products a client can afford. This reduced defaults by 23% in South Africa, on loans MyBucks made from January to October 2017.

The MyBucks Haraka App offers clients nano-loans in real time by using AI based algorithms to predict an applicant’s credit risk, using alternative data sources. This means the client does not need a bank account, credit history or paperwork to get a loan, and this enables total financial inclusion. Haraka (the Swahili word meaning “speed”, or “to hurry”) was initially launched in Kenya with great success and has since been rolled out to Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Swaziland.

Still being piloted, the Donte loan uptake predictor is a deep learning model that predicts the probability that a client will actually take up a loan that has been approved. For those potential customers who do not have ready access to a smartphone, there is the Wakala offering (again, a Swahili word, that means “agent”), which enables greater financial inclusion by employing remote agents using smartphones and tablets to complete an application for clients who need a loan or banking facilities.

There is also a backstop AI system, called Maica (shorthand for the MyBucks Artificial Intelligence Collections Algorithm), which predicts, on a weekly basis, which clients (who are not currently in arrears) have a high probability of missing their next loan repayment. These customers are automatically contacted with loan re-scheduling offers.

These, and other technological initiatives, allow MyBucks to operate successfully. MyBucks keeps its banking charges low and relies on auxiliary services, like insurance products, to generate its revenue. The latest audited annual results, for 2017 released in August 2018, show that MyBucks has loans disbursed amounting to €500m ($587m). It has also achieved a 39.8% operating profit margin.

So it may seem surprising that MyBucks’ share price since its IPO in June 2016 has hardly sparkled. The share price is down by around a third. Van Niekerk remains reasonably sanguine about the share price performance. “We’ve done a number of positive things since the IPO [including a further share issue] and that’s not really reflected in our current share price – but I think it is just a matter of time.”

In any case, MyBucks can lay claim to a credible social impact story. The MyBucks business model carries an inherent social mission by providing financial solutions to people that would otherwise be financially excluded. MyBucks is proud to have received validation of three of the subsidiaries within the group with the social impact ratings from international ratings agency MicroFinanza.

The completion of a new headquarters building in Gauteng has also seen MyBucks initiate a “training of the trainers” scheme, whereby each of the African countries in the MyBucks network send trainers for a 60-day course in financial literacy. Subjects covered are an understanding of insurance products for rural farmers, and even life insurance for householders to guard against the loss of breadwinners. The trainers then return to their home countries to further this knowledge transfer, training more advisors.

MyBucks has bucked the trend and retained a network of 84 bricks and mortar branches that they acquired from the US development NGO, Opportunity International. Indeed, MyBucks continues to work closely with Opportunity International by taking over their banking operations while the NGO concentrates on promoting financial literacy.

Smartphone initiative

However, it is fairly clear that the company’s growth strategy is strongly aligned to the continuing penetration of the mobile smartphone and internet connectivity. And MyBucks has an important initiative in this regard. It is rolling out a smartphone distribution programme, initially to account holders in Mozambique and Malawi. The free smartphones are preloaded with the MyBucks app.

“For the initial rollout, its orders of 10,000 handsets for Mozambique and 10,000 for Malawi,” Van Niekerk confirms, adding that it will be up to the customer to choose which telecom network to join.

“We are fairly network agnostic,” he clarifies, “but we are talking to the networks to ask them to provide reverse billing on data charges on our apps. So the client uses our app, but we would pay. “At the end of the day we don’t want a customer to change networks based on his bank. Rather, the customer should choose the network that can offer the best service and tariff.”

And as for competition from the legacy banks, he points out that, “these days everybody is in the app space. If you don’t have an app, it is almost as if you are not even in the banking space.” And Van Niekerk insists that speculation that some fairly heavy-hitters are about to enter the South Africa fintech space means there is a reason to be optimistic. He believes that there is plenty of space in the sector, and the more players there are the greater will be the pressure on regulators to get and keep this sector in order.

Article by “Stephen Williams”

Forbes

Meet The Man Championing FinTech In Africa – Dave Van Niekerk, Founder Of MyBucks

South African-born Dave Van Niekerk is the founder and CEO of MyBucks, a fast-growing African Fintech company that successfully delivers seamless financial services to banked and ‘unbanked’ consumers alike using next-generation technological platforms.

MyBucks, which is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, has a broad portfolio of virtual banking products which includes lending, insurance and banking, and is supported by services such as mobile banking, credit reports with credit education features, financial budgeting, and emergency cover through insurance. The company operates in 12 African countries and has offered loans to over 700,000 customers.

I caught up with him recently and we talked about how FinTech will play a role in Africa’s next phase of growth, and MyBucks future plans.

What pivoted you towards FinTech as an enterprise?

Having managed and grown banking and financial institutions the old fashioned way with “bricks not clicks”, the inspiration behind MyBucks was both to capitalize on the growing Financial Technology industry with the goal of providing financially inclusive products digitally, to both the formal sector and to the previously unbanked or under banked across Africa. Financial inclusion is a unique challenge and would simply not be viable in the long term without technological advances. The investment and social impact opportunity in creating MyBucks was, and remains wholly worthwhile.

Your company recently launched its IPO on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Concurrently, as the ‘Brexit’ fallout continues, it looks as though Berlin may be stepping up to replace London as Europe’s top FinTech capital. What was the motivation to list publically, why Germany and where do you see MyBucks going from here with regard to European integration?

Long before ‘Brexit’, we viewed Germany as an ideal financial hub for launching our Initial Public Offering. The nation has a reputation for strong governance, which will in turn create a measurable and transparent valuation of our company, metrics that investors internationally will look for when making a decision on an outfit operating within an industry as innovative as FinTech.

Great Britain has been well regarded as perhaps a leading FinTech hub in Europe (with this week’s ‘FinTech Week’ in London serving as a symbolic reminder), however amidst ‘Brexit’ aftershocks, opportunity lies in the stability we continue to see in Europe’s economic hub, Germany.

However, no matter the location, public listings allow organisations like ours to acquire with greater efficiency banking licenses in all of the countries in which we operate and seek to operate, expediting the expansion ambitions of our unique portfolio, which includes mobile banking, lending and insurance throughout Pan-African markets and today, integrated in to Poland, Spain and in future, no doubt further in to Europe.

What are some of the challenges of FinTech as a viable enterprise on the continent of Africa? How do you circumvent or tackle those challenges to ensure profitability and customer service?

Regulation in Africa / Licensing in Africa can be challenging and the time and requirements vary from country to country and often are quite onerous.

Statistically, according to the 2016 Legatum Africa Prosperity Report, nations abiding by rule of law, for example, have seen direct, dramatic returns in GDP ratio and FinTech companies such as ours accordingly emphasise adherence to such regulations as an incentive for our model’s successful integration.

There remain long-ingrained bureaucratic challenges that FinTech companies in developed markets have been able to largely circumvent. However in Africa, FinTech is very much regulated the same way traditional banks and financial institutions are. I foresee the easing of regulatory restrictions over time, those that have encumbered companies such as ours in-past, given the opportunity for both financial inclusion for a given citizenry, together with governmental ability to properly effect taxation from the data provided, based on greater metrics as to one’s income.

Ultimately, Africa leads in ‘sector convergence’, with smartphone usage and mobile application software downloads increasing on a daily basis. This has directly benefitted the financial services we offer, those we continue to shape and revitalise as technology advances.

Many argue that there is presently a shortfall in financial inclusion on the continent of Africa – How can FinTech and more particularly, MyBucks, play a role in financial inclusion?

There is no question that financial ‘exclusion’, though perhaps not deliberate, has a history of fostering disillusionment in Africa. There is also no question that today, access to brick and mortar banking institutions are not the solution for rural-dwelling Africans.

One method we are particularly proud of to break the ongoing cycle of poverty due to lack of fundamental access and accountable aid is via our unprecedented collaboration with global Non-Government Organisation (NGO) Opportunity International. This partnership is truly revolutionary, as the conclusion of the acquisition of four banks and two microfinance institutions from Opportunity International will add Ghana, Tanzania and Mozambique to MyBucks’ country portfolio, increasing our customer base to 1.5 million. While beneficial for us, importantly, this will allow MyBucks far greater access to funding in local currencies, significantly assisting our enhanced consumer base and offering a vastly wider degree of financial inclusion services.

Through our partnership with Opportunity International as but an example, FinTech – indeed MyBucks – will be able to promote sustainable and responsible lending practices that allow for meaningful corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects to be funded, realized and sustain in accountable fashion.

There has been much excitement around the proprietary software of FinCloud. What makes this system particularly unique?

MyBucks is the first, and currently only FinTech business in Africa to make use of credit technology, supported by an in-house Artificial Intelligence (AI) team and cutting edge software we’ve labeled FinCloud, used to determine the credit history and accordingly creditworthiness of consumers.

In FinTech, there is always a slight degree of risk and in Africa, where many have been excluded from the financial sector historically, one often starts relatively from scratch.

Conversely, the MyBucks Tech team has developed a cloud-based proprietary software solution that is both an interface to our customers as well as to our internal loan management enterprise. FinCloud is able to properly access our customers’ bank statements and bank accounts at application date, to better assess creditworthiness and assist the collection process. Hence, FinCloud, together with our internally developed self-learning credit decision and scoring system, works to continuously attain customer behavioral patterns from previous loans and is able to very accurately predict a customer’s probability of default for a particular product at any given time.

FinCloud’s underlying algorithms take a number of factors into account, such as behavioral data, transactional data and employment information. The system then assigns a unique credit score and determines a probability of default, as mentioned, which in turn drives a unique credit offering to the client, by adjusting the loan amount, term and interest rate.

This type of Artificial Intelligence ultimately and dramatically assuages concern on an industry built on return on investment. We see greater and greater tech-driven sectoral convergence boons allowing for lesser risk in implementing loans in new markets with efficiency.

Where do you see the company five years from now? How about FinTech as an industry itself?

The advent of ‘Big Data’ and its deployment throughout Africa will allow companies such as MyBucks to identify particular needs and demands in certain African markets, continuing our mantra of adaptability while allowing for reliable transactions and the expansion of our model even further across the continent.

In five years, I can predict greater integration, an increase to our service portfolio in-step with technological achievement and a wider net of partnerships that will drive financial inclusion across Africa.

FinTech is a chief proponent of this; the industry will dramatically reshape the worldwide financial sector and we welcome being a part of this process, this precedent in globalization as a force for good.

Article by “Mfonobong Nsehe”

How we made it in Africa

MyBucks founder on recovering from past failures and getting back in the financial services game

South African Dave Van Niekerk is the man behind the pan-African fintech company MyBucks. The Frankfurt-listed business leverages technology to provide financial products and services to the low and middle-income customer segment, predominantly in high-growth emerging markets. To date the company has provided loans to over 800,000 customers in 12 African markets, and has also expanded to Spain, Poland and (most recently) Australia.

Van Niekerk previously founded Blue Financial Services, which is now suspended on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). Prior to that he spent years working at African Bank.

Kate Douglas talks to Van Niekerk to learn more about what it takes to start a pan-African business, why he listed MyBucks internationally, and how he has managed to bounce back from past failures. Here are slightly edited extracts of the interview.

What lessons did you learn from your time at African Bank and Blue Financial Services?

Infrastructure is so expensive to [set up] in Africa. To get that critical mass and scale that you need to justify setting up infrastructure – I think it [makes it] very difficult for players entering Africa. So I think new incumbents going into Africa need a lot of investment behind them – and I learned that at both those organisations… When I was at African Bank we were still putting African Bank together – we were merging three or four lenders together, we were [getting] the banking licence – and just learning what it took to go from being a normal business to being a bank… was a lesson on its own in terms of costs and the people involved.

And then with Blue Financial Services, when we went into other African markets, [I learned] it really takes a long time to get regulation and approved for licensing. It also takes you a long time to put down the branches for infrastructure, and the costs are extremely high. So I think along the way the biggest lesson was to do it cheaper and more cost-effectively because inevitably you build very big infrastructure and if you don’t have sufficient cash to put through it, and your organisation doesn’t have efficient scale, you are not going to be successful in the long term. So you need to make sure that your organisation is infrastructure light – specifically in Africa. Then you need to be cognisant of the fact that it is going to take you longer in Africa than it would in most places to get your licences and approvals to operate. You just have to understand that the time frames are very different. You almost need to start earlier, and so the lesson is if you want to be in Ghana two years from now, you need to start the process now.

There was a lot of negative press around Blue Financial Services’ demise. Was this a challenge with starting MyBucks?

It is two-fold. Firstly, when it came to Blue Financial Services, we ran into funding issues around the financial crisis time. One of our biggest shareholders at the time was AIG, and when you had AIG on board as a shareholder pre-2008 financial collapse, it was something to be proud of. In 2008 AIG was under massive pressure, we needed to raise more capital and [with] the nature of our funding structure and of our shareholders, we weren’t able to raise more capital. So we needed to recapitalise the business and that goes back to the comment I made to you about building new infrastructure – it is very expensive to maintain and run. And if you no longer have the liquidity to continue lending in Africa, but you have got 450 branches and 3,000 people – you have got a massive overhead structure you have to maintain. So we needed to recapitalise the business, which was a decision that the board and the shareholders made at the time…

And then ultimately we brought on board a new shareholder who said that they wanted to take the reins and actually run the business, and I was quite happy with that. So I stepped out as the CEO. They said that they had injected capital, and the next two years showed phenomenal growth. And then in year three they managed to get themselves suspended on the JSE, or on the AltX, and ever since then they have sort of said it is previous management’s fault. So it is a little bit like crying foul two or three years after the initial management team left.

On my watch, most certainly, I think we should’ve been better capitalised, but it was a perfect storm. It was 2008 and the liquidity in the markets was a problem. The funding lines we had lined up just dried up, and our shareholder structure – which at one stage was a massive advantage to us – became a disadvantage because people were solving the world’s problems with those players and not necessarily looking at one listed company down in South Africa.

But there were some articles that were published around Blue’s collapse that suggested that you were in part to blame. Did this not cause damage to your reputation with potential investors and partners?

Most certainly. Everyone always looks at your history and they look at what you’ve done before. Ironically enough, I have got a lot of investors that say they are happy that I [had my experience with] Blue before, and that it helped me in terms of my lessons and my understanding of the continent. So they have actually been very supportive about the fact that this is easier and better the second time round because I’ve learned lessons from the first round. And [it is] why I built more of a self-sustainable model that doesn’t require new capital all the time to continue to grow. The business is self-sustainable, it is self-funding, in many instances.

So it is a very different structure and I also have got a very different shareholder mix. My shareholders are very diverse, across the world, and are very high-net-worth individuals, so that when they put money behind things, they make it work. And I think with… what we are doing in Africa and in the rest of the world, they look at [my time at Blue] as being a good learning curve for me and they also understand the full story of what went down.

What advice do you have for other entrepreneurs in terms of overcoming the reputational challenges of previous failures and trying to win back trust from potential investors and partners?

First of all, it is obviously a confidence knock when the business goes through tough times. I think that it is a bit like falling off the horse – you just have to get back on… But you do need to understand that it’s like being on the rugby field: sometimes you’ll miss that try and you’ve just got to get back out there, do it again, and learn lessons from what you have done in the past. You must try finding ways to improve the way you operate. But the most important thing is to get back in the game.

Funny enough, the American market and much of the international market, respect failure because they see that as a learning experience for people. They understand that there are many entrepreneurs that only make it on their third or fourth attempt… And they eventually get it right, and when they get it right, they get it right spectacularly. But people will make mistakes, they will fail – and they need to just pick themselves up and remember it doesn’t mean you are a bad entrepreneur or a bad manager if you’ve had a failure. You should be reflective and have a look at what went wrong. But just having the ability to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get on with it – people respect you more if you have managed to do that. And those war wounds give you the experience and toughen you up for what comes next.

Why did you decide to list MyBucks on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, as opposed to the JSE?

We listed last year June on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, and that was partly because we were starting to get banking licences… Regulators want to see a public company because they have ownership thresholds, so individuals and private companies can’t hold more than a certain percentage of a bank. If you want to hold a bank in many of the African jurisdictions – and much of the world too – there are ownership requirements. And the way to meet the requirements is to be a publically-listed company, and listed in a premier destination.

We could have listed on the JSE and the LSE… or in the States. But ironically enough, most of our initial investors are German, Austrian, and one or two from the UK – and they were leaning towards a European listing. And then it was a choice of the UK or Germany. But at that stage there was this whole Brexit thing going on – and so their advice was to go with Germany. It is a brilliant exchange. The Germans are everything when it comes to efficiency. It took us about a year to get the listing done and we finally finished it off in June last year. After that the banking licences in African [markets] started to be approved.

Currently we have a banking licence in Uganda, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia and we are looking at two or three other markets to get additional banking licences.

Why launch in Spain and Poland?

People said that we might be a great fintech player in Africa, but we won’t really compete in the international market, because it is different to Africa. But we – South African fintech businesses – are actually ahead of the game… Because we are used to dealing in emerging markets to get around hurdles and obstacles, we’ve got [innovations] like mobile payments – so we are actually ahead of the game when it comes to European players and even the US. So I think we decided to prove that our technology would work in Europe, and we launched in Spain and Poland.

Everyone always asks why Spain and Poland. But the thinking there was they were relatively easy markets to get into because our licensing requirements didn’t take more than six months. And secondly, the way I like to think of it is if we were a car manufacturer, McLaren, and building cars – we would want to test them on the Formula 1 track. [Similarly], we take that technology, pop it in Europe and see how we compete with the European financial service players, banks and lenders. It turned out to be beneficial for us in two ways. One, we took what we had learned in Africa to Europe, and we were doing things differently to European players. And then the European players also did teach us a thing or two on how they were processing data, and some of their architecture, and we bought that back to our African operation. So it has been quite a good R&D spin for us.

And then our latest foray is that we recently acquired an online credit provider in Australia – and that is our first entry into that part of the world. We think that Australia could be our base for East Asia markets going forward.

Tell me about MyBucks’ insurance offering in Africa. What works and doesn’t work?

So the jury is still out to be honest with you. I think it is early days. Insurance is something we launched after we launched the lending and banking products. We are typically doing anything from crop insurance, where the person takes an agricultural loan to small business insurance, to doing emergence type insurance, and credit, life, funeral insurance – we have even got a legal insurance. And different things work in different countries. So you can’t really paint Africa with the same paint brush. So Botswana we have got a big uptake on people wanting to have life cover and wanting legal cover. In Kenya, for instance, it is more about crop insurance. So it varies from market to market.

What we have seen is more of a need for short-term insurance products where people can pay small amounts on a daily, weekly, monthly basis rather than a big premium. People want to be almost able to sort of switch on and switch off their insurance when they need to. People don’t want to get stuck in a long contract where they have to pay every single month. So typically a farmer would want to insure for that season, he doesn’t want to sign a five year insurance product.

Because we are a fintech business we are dealing with a lot of data. So even customers that apply for credit, or insurance, or banking, we get access to what is going on in their financial world and then we can make a recommendation… We [also] tell a customer what the credit bureau thinks of him. So anyone who is applying for credit understands where he stands with the credit bureau and what his credit rating is… On top of that we tell him what his affordability is. Looking at the person’s financial history, be it off a mobile wallet or off a bank account, we can say ‘this is your income, this is your expenses, this your disposable income, that is why we are granting you a loan of X amount’… So that gives the customer a little more sort of a global view…

And then we built in quite a nice tool, specifically for the South African market recently, where customers were even told the minute there was a change to their credit profile. So if somebody has to list you on the credit bureau today, say you forget to pay a doctors bill for R50… then we would inform our customers saying there has been a default notice posted on the credit bureau for R50 from this doctor. Then customers can take remedial action.

Any advice to others with ventures targeting African markets?

First of all, you are going to have to look at local partnerships. More so than ever before, you need local partners in the markets. You need local shareholders and directors that understand the lay of the land, the legislative environment and almost the socio-political environment… Just having that day-to-day, on-the-ground knowledge is invaluable. You can’t launch in the African markets anymore without having a local partner or local influence in the business. So that is the foremost thing – look for local partners in those markets.

Second thing is be patient because, even with local partners, you’re in for a long ride to get all your approvals and finally get operating. But the scope is there and there is business out there. And you will see many of the South African multinational brands are crossing the borders into [other] African markets. But a lot of the times they will buy a local player or they will partner locally and get going.

What is the one thing you wish you knew about entrepreneurship before you got started?

I could tell my younger self a few things. One thing about entrepreneurs is we are always looking ahead and we don’t always even anticipate failure nor that not everyone has our best interests at heart. So I probably learned a lot about people as an entrepreneur – not necessarily all good things I have to tell you. So I would probably want to tell my younger self to be less naive when people tell and promise you things, and don’t base your business decisions on thinking always the best of people… You need to be a little bit more street smart in terms of dealing with people – be it a board or investor… It is quite a hard lesson to learn… My younger self was a little naive in thinking that everyone has your best interests at heart. But it doesn’t always work like that.

Article by “Kate Douglason”

Founder and Executive Chairman, MyBucks

Founder and Executive Chairman, MyBucks

With 21-years’ experience in the microfinance industry, Dave Van Niekerk, is one of the founding members and current Founder and Executive Chairman of MyBucks.

Van Niekerk began his micro-finance career working at one of the founding companies of the one-time South African financial giant, African bank founding Blue financial Services and founding MyBucks.

Established in 2012 with international backing, MyBucks is Africa’s first fintech company, successfully delivering seamless financial services to consumers using technology platforms.

Based in Luxembourg, MyBucks holds the brands Haraka, GetBucks, GetSure, GetBanked, Oportunity Bank and New Finance Bank. MyBucks listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in June 2016, making it the first African Fintech company to list on the Exchange.

The MyBucks Group’s global footprint has grown to seven MFI operations, five banking operations, with operations in eleven African countries as well as operations in Europe and Australia.

As an African micro-finance pioneer, Dave has witnessed Africa first-hand and its growth over the last 21 years, fuelling his passion for pioneering the promotion of investment in many African countries, particularly in the financial and micro-finance sector. He continues to create innovating business models that make financial inclusion for people across the African continent a reality.

Address

Cnr. Lynnwood & Botterklapper Street, Pretoria

Email

val@vanniekerk.in

Phone

+27 87 012 5461

Connect with Dave