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Financial Risk Manager | MSc Competition, Regulation and Market Economics | GARP South Africa Committee Member.
A productive and thought-provoking week at RiskMinds International 2025 in London. It was a privilege to join the FirstRand delegation for a series of strategic engagements with global regulators, CROs, economists and senior risk leaders shaping the evolution of financial-sector regulation and market structure. Across the week, several themes stood out strongly: • Regulatory developments reshaping global market structure, including shifts in the US Treasury ecosystem and supervisory expectations across jurisdictions. • Advancements in AI and machine learning, and the growing emphasis on governance, explainability, oversight and responsible adoption. • Model-risk management and stress testing, as supervisors increase focus on transparency, operational resilience and robust validation frameworks. • Capital resilience and balance-sheet strength, as banks navigate an increasingly complex macro-regulatory and interest-rate environment. A theme raised by several global financial institutions, policy institutes and regulators was the challenge of applying standardised prudential frameworks across highly diverse banking models — highlighting the need for approaches that maintain resilience while recognising business-model heterogeneity across markets. I am grateful to FirstRand for the opportunity to participate as part of the delegation and for the engaging discussions and strategic perspectives shared throughout the week. Warm congratulations to Thloni Mhango, FRM on her recent appointment as CRO of FNB Commercial Banking — a well-deserved milestone and a testament to strong leadership across the Group. It was also encouraging to see strong representation from South African risk leaders contributing to global discussions at RiskMinds this year. A sincere thank you to everyone I engaged with over the past few days for the insightful perspectives shared. I look forward to building on this momentum as the industry navigates a rapidly shifting regulatory and technological landscape.