Outgoing FirstRand CEO Alan Pullinger: "It's been an honour and a privilege."

On presenting the last set of results for FirstRand
It's been an honour and a privilege, FirstRand is such a special place I joined 26 years ago, I knew nothing about banking, and it was a gift to be able to, you know, learn from GT Ferreira, Laurie Dippenaar and Paul Harris, they taught me the ropes. So it's an absolute gift, I've been super, super lucky. FirstRand is a family it's not just a job. Don't tell the remuneration committee, but I would probably do it for free."

On teamwork
At the end of the day, it's about the team. If you face challenges alone it's super, super tough. But if you've got a team around and you have really good people, to be honest, you can confront almost anything. Being a tight unit is super powerful, and that's how you get through crises. I've had great people around me, better people than me that have made me look good. It's always a team game. That's my biggest takeaway.

On leaving
People always say to me when you leave what earnings number do you want to achieve? What are you looking for? What share price are you looking for? I can't control those things. But there are some things that we can control. And, and one of them is, the mojo of the business. How the group is feeling. Are we on the front foot? Engagement with employees, are we still attracting talent? How do our people feel? I think we're in a good space, I'm not sure I can ask for actually any more than that. I'm going to do my best on the numbers, and the team will do their best but it will be what it is.

On the numbers
If you come to the six months numbers, we are pleased. There is good top line performance. One of the standouts for us is, of course, what we've done with credit, and the cost of credit. This has been a long term story for us. Coming back to COVID, as we came out of COVID, we were cautious, we were discerning. For a while, we were accused of not lending, or certainly not lending enough, and our peers in the domestic market were growing their balance sheets a lot faster, and we said we are waiting, we are biding our time, we are learning, we focusing on low and medium risk customers, we favouring secured versus unsecured. As our visibilities improved, and we got a better handle on the cost of credit, we've been able to lean onto the front foot.

On the tough economic environment
Payment strain is starting to manifest, there is no doubt. The South African economy is really in a tough place. We seeing it in the retail books in particular. On the unsecured lending, we are starting to see it creep into WesBank car finance. We're seeing it in mortgages.

On interest rates
I don't think the environment is going to get easier. It’s likely to be more of the same. When we started off the new year new, you know, got back from holiday didn't take long for load shedding to come back and all of the things that we thought were a 2023 phenomenon have started again and you've got high interest rates.
The South African Reserve Bank has said they are in restrictive territory. And you can see that it's having an impact. There's no doubt it is throttling consumers, but I do think later in the current year we will see interest rate cuts. I'm pretty sure. But there are two points I would want to make there. One they're going to be further out than we think. And secondly, it's going to be a shallow cutting cycle. We expect the repo to go from eight and a quarter to seven. But that's it. We don't think there's much more than one and a quarter percent of cuts coming


On what is next
I know, it's going to sound crazy if I say this, but I actually am not sure. I have really had my head down focusing on FirstRand to the very last day that I hand over at the end of March, then I'm going to take a little bit of leave. I do need to contemplate what I'm going to do. I haven't had a break for a very long time. So I'm not sure what that feels like. So this transition is it's exciting, but I suppose a little bit daunting for me. So I need to go through that. I'm not going to rush to sign up to lots of things otherwise when we bump into each other in a year's time I'm going to tell you how busy I am because I'm sitting on so many boards, and I'm reading so many board packs and I'm going to be complaining again.
I'm going to take a break and then I'll see what is next. I still have a little bit too much energy to choose to go and sit in the garden.