Publications
Partners
Faith Khanyile is responsible for many millions of rands’ worth of investment on a daily basis, and she sits on the boards of companies ranging from Discovery and the FirstRand Empowerment Trust to Safari Retail, yet she is one of the most unharried and friendly individuals you could hope to meet in these financially stressed times.
There’s not a whiff of officiousness as the CEO and co-founder of WDB Investment Holdings orders me a cappuccino and herself a glass of water in her hi-tech, gracious offices in the leafy suburb of Illovo, Sandton.
She was enjoying working for investment holding company Brait in the 1990s when she heard about the WDB Trust. It was established in 1991, and its flagship beneficiary programme was WDB Micro Finance, a micro-credit programme that replicates the Grameen Bank philosophy of banking for the poorest of the poor.
But the trust needed funding. This spoke to Khanyile’s community
-minded spirit and she asked Brait to second her to WDB.
“They not only agreed, but said they would help me to start the investment holdings for it,” she says.
WDB Investment Holdings was formed in 1996 with Khanyile as one of its founders. She sat on its board as a nonexecutive director and continued in this role while she worked at Standard Bank Corporate and Investment Banking from 2001 to 2013.
She was the first black woman to head Standard Bank’s Corporate Banking division, which she did for six years, and served as a member of its executive and credit committees.
“I wanted experience in a large corporate and I got it. After 12 years, I had gone as high as I could go. My ambition was satisfied.”
She adds, with refreshing candour, that at the beginning of her career, “I wanted to make lots of money. I did so and I enjoyed it. But after a while, I questioned why I was doing it.”
Two years ago, she left the bank and joined WDB Investment Holdings as its CEO.
“I always wanted to do more than ‘just make money’. I wanted to make a difference in women’s lives,” she says.
She was raised in poverty near Empangeni in rural KwaZulu-Natal. Her parents treated their daughters and son equally, offering them great opportunities. She wants to pass on that legacy to today’s generation.
“WDB Investment Holdings is unusual because we’re a female-activist company, owned and run by women for women,” she says.
It’s an investment company with a conscience – it invests in township shopping malls and rural towns, as well as in affordable housing. The company has an enterprise development fund that provides loans and business support to female entrepreneurs.
Today, more than R165 million in investment dividends have been channelled to the WDB Trust.
Over the past 20 years, WDB Investment Holdings has built up its net asset value from zero to just under R4 billion.
Khanyile believes women are concentrated so heavily in the small-, micro- and medium-enterprise sector because “it is so difficult for them to scale up their businesses and break into the larger corporate value chain as suppliers”.
WDB Enterprise Development is supporting 13 female farmers in Limpopo “with more than just loans. We negotiate with companies, such as Tiger Brands and Massmart, to take their produce.”
The loans are imaginative and broad – women can apply for just R50 or larger amounts up to R500 000.
The company vision ranges from championing the female presence in the boardroom to providing unemployed graduates with finance and accounting training, as well as university scholarships.
Khanyile was a recipient of a scholarship that took her to the US after she matriculated from Ohlange High School in Inanda, north of Durban.
Inspired by her hard-working parents, she decided to study economics and finance. Khanyile graduated with an MBA in international finance from Bentley University in Massachusetts, and also obtained her bachelor’s degree in economics.
“Life was exciting in the late 1980s and 1990s with the US economy booming, but I decided to come home. I wanted to give back to South Africa.”
Khanyile points out that you “need to have in order to give”. She set about following that maxim as she worked “incredibly hard. Corporate life can be a rat race. I sacrificed my personal and family life,” says the married mother of four children, who range in age from six to 30.
She relaxes at the weekend by spending lots of time with her family, “especially with the baby. I do try to have a balanced life because I don’t want to burn out from stress.
BUSINESS TIP: Surround yourself with people who have a passion for what they do and business will take care of itself.
MENTOR: I’ve had different people at various stages. Peter Wharton-Hood, chief operating officer at Standard Bank, helped me understand corporate culture and rules.
BOOKS: The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. He gives you strategies for higher levels of consciousness by focusing your mind in the present.
INSPIRATION: Former first lady Zanele Mbeki, who founded WDB. She’s selfless in her determination to end poverty.
WOW! MOMENT: Seeing my mother’s face as I graduated with my MBA.
LIFE LESSON: Waking up every day and knowing what I do has a positive impact on women.
