Business . Investments

Based: Cape Town

Michael Jordaan stepped down as CEO of First National Bank (FNB) in August 2013 to spend more time working on his long-standing passion for entrepreneurship.
First National Bank (FNB) is one of South Africa’s largest banks with a customer base of nearly nine million. Michael now heads up a start-up private investment company, Montegray Capital and is involved in various businesses, including the mobile messaging company Mxit. He is also non-executive Director of JSE Limited.
With more than 20 years’ experience in the financial services sector and nearly a decade at the helm of First National Bank, Michael oversaw the move away from traditional banking towards rewarding ecosystem-centric solutions for customers. He led FNB to be named the “World’s Most Innovative Bank” in the 2012 BAI-Financial Global Banking Innovation Awards, held in Washington DC. He was also the recipient of the CNBC Africa Business Leader of the Year for Southern Africa award.
Michael joined the “Class Of” Program with Rand Merchant Bank (RMB), the Investment Banking division of the FirstRand Group, in 1994 where he gained valuable experience in the Credit and Corporate Finance divisions. He has held various CEO positions throughout the FirstRand Group, including Origin Bank (which rebranded to RMB Private Bank), FNB eBucks and FNB HomeLoans. He headed up FNB’s Customer Solutions Division in the FirstRand Retail Cluster in 2002, and was appointed as CEO of FNB in 2004 at the age of 36.
During his time as CEO, Michael placed significant focus on cultivating and supporting an innovative culture within FNB to nurture ideas from employees. Under his guidance, the FNB Innovators’ Programme was launched in 2004 and at the time of his resignation, 7,244 innovations had been implemented. Encouraging and supporting self-generated innovation has improved FNB’s ability to respond to the exponential rate of business change in the global banking market.
Michael is well known within the South African context as being on the forefront of leadership, innovation and technology. In 2009, he was awarded the regional Excel Award for his employee communication programme called “On MJ’s Mind”, by the Association of Business Communicators and in 2011 he made the Top Five list of SA Newsmakers of the Year for FNB’s social media presence.