Absa managing executive Christo Vrey is a driving force in the digital world, keeping other banks on their toes, technologically speaking. Vrey, who has 15 years’ experience in the financial sector, is the managing executive for Absa’s digital channels division, which celebrated a major milestone this year: reaching 500000 cellphone banking customers. <\/p>\n
With 38m cellphone subscribers in SA, there is great opportunity for the mobile channel to become the primary banking interface for many South Africans. And it’s up to Vrey and his team to ensure that this innovative form of banking is as accessible as possible. <\/p>\n
He took some time to tell FM Campus about the challenges of climbing the ranks of SA’s biggest retail bank. <\/p>\n
Q: How did you get to this position?<\/strong> <\/p>\n A: I’ve always been involved with computers. My first real job was working as a computer programmer at what was then called Discount House of SA, where I was programming in Pascal. <\/p>\n I’m actually a teacher by qualification, but I changed my mind just before getting appointed when I went to an agency to see what else I could do with my qualification. They asked me what I wanted to do. I told them and I landed the job. Teaching is still close to my heart, but there’s a lot of opportunity to teach within the organisation. <\/p>\n Q: What is a typical day for a managing executive?<\/strong> <\/p>\n A: A large portion of the day is spent looking over the business and ensuring that we run a stable ship. This means starting the day early (so I can spend time with my two kids), then getting into the office, going through e-mail and dealing with urgent matters and addressing them at meetings. <\/p>\n One is constantly dealing with the challenges that the world of digital banking throws at you and when systems are down, it’s not a good place to be. <\/p>\n Q: What do you do to relax?<\/strong> <\/p>\n A: Believe it or not, having kids makes for a relaxing opportunity; I spend a lot of time with them. I also play a bit of tennis and frequent the gym. It’s very important to look after yourself when you work in a high-pressure environment. And when we get the chance, we go to the coast. <\/p>\n Q: How do you keep up with the competition?<\/strong> <\/p>\n A: There’s one key driver to success in this industry: to keep your customers’ best interests at heart at all times. This means you have to always be able to give them the services they require and keep up with what the competition has to offer. <\/p>\n Q: What does it take to climb the ropes of a large organisation, such as Absa?<\/strong> <\/p>\n A: There are many opportunities in a big organisation so it’s important to find your passion and build on it. Then you should always make an effort to show people what you are good at. One can sense whether a person is proud of what they do. Once we pick this up, we can do a lot for that individual to ensure their aspirations are met. Always talk to someone who is very good at something — as a mentor or guide. <\/p>\n Q: What is the future of banking?<\/strong> <\/p>\n A: I don’t see any of the new digital channels disappearing. The industry is very competitive, with everyone watching each other. The newer mediums allow us to reach far more customers. Statistics show that one out of 10 of our customers who are online conduct more transactions than our whole client base. The often-heard customer quote, “I haven’t been at the branch in a year,” is testament to the satisfaction and convenience the new services provide. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Absa managing executive Christo Vrey is a driving force in the digital world<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5545"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}