Spiro Georgopoulos — CEO OF GROBANK, NICHE BANKING

mix 93.8 some legendary radio for you on a Monday evening as we do each and every Monday at this time it is time for what's involved and my special guest in studio and I don't know how much we're gonna talk about business tonight we might just end up reminiscing but let's have a warm welcome to the CEO of a brand new bank called Grow Bank it's Spiro Georgiopoulos hello there Spiro hello David nice to be here great to have you here even more so that I've now discovered your fellow Benone boy absolutely a great little time hmm so we've spent a lot of time reminiscing but now we're gonna get on to this brand new bank it's a bank called Grow Bank and it caught my attention right from the start so you are the CEO but let's go back in time just a little bit tell me a little bit about Spiro and let's track your journey and how you ended up as CEO at Grow Bank Wow okay well as you said when you introduced me I am a Benone boy so not born but certainly bred in Benone I'm a son of immigrants who came through to the country in the 60s but I've spent most of my life either in in consulting or in in banking originally for standard bank which is the big blue as everyone knows it and then about nine years ago I was appointed a CEO of what was then known as the Bank of Athens which was the community bank pretty much serving the Greek and Hellenic communities in in the country and then late last year we concluded a transaction with new shareholders as the original Greek shareholder left the country and we launched Grow Bank which actually happened in April this year it's amazing and you were saying earlier on we were having a chat and I was like bank Athens was around for a while and you said in fact it started off in this country back in 1947 so it's a bank with quite a lot of history absolutely yeah it's just a little bit of history so during the Second World War the Greece had a royal family who for their own protection were sent to South Africa under the protection of Jan Smuts and the government then and they lived in Irene at Jan Smuts' house for the duration of the war until the the Nazis were overthrown and then they went back to Greece but as they were leaving Jan Smuts persuaded the Greek king at that time to to set up a bank to service the Greek community because there were a lot of Greek expats coming into the country looking for a better life it's fascinating that I mean when you told me that history as well I mean like you say that's Irene that's where the princess got her name from and all sorts of things like that there is a very very rich history so you managed to get into banking and I noticed you glossed over quite a lot of I think important things but it's okay we're gonna be here to talk about the bank so why why the change though why did you guys decide you need to do something else because and we're gonna get into it the bank is fairly niched at the moment correct it is so first of all the the old shareholder the National Bank of Greece as part of their divestment program from all countries that they were in not only South Africa as part of the Greek crisis and the European Union requirements had to divest from the bank in South Africa as they did from their bank in Turkey and their bank in Egypt and so on and so forth but that gave us an opportunity to take a look at where this bank was going to go and who should be the new shareholders and it became evident to us fairly early on that we had to find the things that we thought were going to matter going forward over the next 25 years and for us the main thing was food and water security so we believe that the main thing that's going to drive economic progress in the country over the next 25 years and as a matter of fact on the African continent is securing food and securing water and a financial institution that specializes in that has I think quite a significant role to play in supporting economic growth and supporting businesses that are involved in the food and agricultural value check and when we say I mean I said it's a niche bank but I mean it's it's a broad niche even though it is niche because just about everything you can think of supply chain logistics it's it's all in there from the very very small farmers right up to the biggest of the big absolutely you've got it spot-on so you you imagine by the time food gets to your and my plate at home how much has happened for that food to happen from the time something is planted on a farm or an animal is is is heard it or grown to when grain is stored to it's got to be transported somebody's got a manufacturer and and beneficial to all of the sort of stuff it's got to be wholesaled ultimately retailed and then you're nice consumers going by it so the food value chain pretty much touches all aspects of the economy as you move through it so when you when you when you look to targeting this and it certainly makes sense I mean there's people who say that in a hundred years time war is going to be fought over waters so securing food and water and then looking at that and in terms of how we do it but does this your banking services do they just cater for for companies in this sector or for everyday people people who may work in the food industry so they can open a personal account with you by and large we are a business and corporate banks our main focus is actually servicing businesses and our and our focus around that is really what we would call family-run businesses so businesses that on we're not we're not trying to compete for the very large corporates that are listed on the stock exchange that's not our game our game is to actually grow what we would call entrepreneurs and SMEs and we see family businesses as let's call it the center of employment creation in the country and economic growth in the country and so that's where we focus on and if you can imagine the heritage and the history of the bank a lot of the Greek expats who came to the country pretty much set up little businesses I mean we all joke about the corner cafe you know there was a Greek corner cafe pretty much in every neighborhood well that's where the heritage and the let's call it in the skills base of the bank comes from and it's built off that but it's now being extended into areas that we traditionally didn't bank which is really the food and agricultural space and that's because of our new shareholders who brought some real skills expertise and muscle in that in that area well if you don't mind when we come back I'd like to have a chat about who those those partners on those shareholders are so we can get a bit of a better idea and then we can we can take it from there but fascinating and I like the fact that you mention the Greek corner cafe because when you think about it without the Greek corner cafe life as we know it would not have happened particularly in the small towns that we come from and that that whole idea of family businesses is something that resonates greatly with me because that's why I do the show that's what I aim at I aim at entrepreneurs and the smaller businesses a big corporates can look after themselves they've done okay so far but it's it's those kind of people and I mean just the way this bank has been structured your marketing your PR is absolutely brilliant and it speaks to people I mean even though I was interviewing you when I was going through everything I was like okay I like this I'm having thoughts here about where I want to put my business banking anyway so we are chatting to CEO of grow bank a brand-new bank launched officially on the 8th of April it is Spiro Georgiopoulos who's in studio with me we'll be back finding about those shareholders in just a bit it is what's involved Spiro Georgiopoulos in studio with me tonight so just before the break I said I'd be very interested to hear who your partners are is it tell me we can talk about are they proud partners of grow bank absolutely they are so let's have a go let's see what they are so we have three major shareholders and they each play a very quite significant role in it so we start off with an interest from the government so the public investment corporation has a share in the bank and that's because of kind of the the focus that is being placed on food security and so on we then have the the local agricultural and financial services group called afkri group holdings which everyone will know and they're a major player bringing you know more than a hundred years of knowledge in the agricultural space and about 70 years in the food space and then we have an international player but who's heavily invested in Africa and specifically South Africa known as Fairfax capital and they've they they believe in the African continent and they've set up a company called Fairfax Africa and they've invested not only in South Africa but in in a number of countries around the continent together in some cases with afkri in securing grain storage facilities and securing agricultural capability around the African continent so talking to this issue of food security which they believe and we believe now is not only a South African thing but actually a thing that affects the whole continent now what are you specifically hoping to bring to this whole should have you're now targeting the market and it's in the future sector it's in the agricultural sector so you've got the banking experience these guys have got the the agricultural experience but now somebody listening tonight what sort of what what are you bringing to the party for these people how are you gonna make it better so first of all you you're quite correct in saying that we're combining this this type of expertise in a unique way so although all of the other big banks have a very good agricultural banking offering none of them are actually owned or partnered completely with specialists in agricultural and food and that being afkri specifically and Fairfax further into the continent so combining a real deep understanding of what it means to run a family business and that's where the bank comes from and the and the issues that family businesses face combining that with deep skills in understanding what it means to run a farm or what it means to run a food business gives us I think quite a unique niche and a unique offering and building that expertise in that area I think will make us quite powerful in the way that we can go to market I think it's it's amazing what you're doing a friend of mine left was at school with me as well left South Africa and went to go and take over the family farm in Zimbabwe and before everything went the way it did in Zimbabwe he was saying that one of the biggest struggles they had as a family farm was getting the finance getting the stuff approved people were helping them and I can only imagine in South Africa it must be a similar situation then along comes you and and you keep on mentioning this family thing so do you also and are you planning on also catering to small farmers you know the guys you've got the small farming and they starting up and they wanting to grow is that something you're going to be focusing on absolutely so let me start by saying you know I don't want to sound like a charity organization we're not so we make decisions on commercial on a commercial basis on everything well yes and that's how you survive in business you've got to make the right business decision so we do look to service those business owners who have a viable business offering and look like they will survive and grow but coming to your question your second question around small farmers or what we call small-scale farmers we see that as a critical component of spreading if you like the economic well-being in the country and and supporting small cut smart small-scale farmers is going to be a very important part of what the bank does now you've got to do this in very smart ways and I think because we have the partnership with afkri or AGH as they're called nowadays brings this real smart way of engaging small farmers that doesn't look at just providing something like money financing and then walking away and then most of them fail what you need to do is you need to wrap the offering around equipment around knowledge around expertise around science around finance you've got to be able to package that in such a way that the small-scale farmers one can afford it and two it will really help them to grow their businesses and that's where I think we can actually play quite a significant role and I mean you know it's it's common knowledge that in in most of Africa the the farming community as it were is shrinking and and you know a lot of people are moving that have been moving to cities and there's been a lot of emphasis on jobs in the cities and you know with the mining industries etc people have moved away from traditional farming and that's a problem because one day we're gonna run out of farmers and when we run out of farmers there's there's going to be a big crisis so you guys are really thinking towards the future here and what you're doing and I think it says a lot about the bank and the vision of the bank that you're focusing on this what about into Africa you've mentioned Africa once or twice do you have aspirations into Africa do some of the shareholders have shareholders in Africa they do and although South Africa is our initial focus area specifically for the bank our shareholders both Atlas Mara and Fairfax who own Atlas Mara which is a bank banking group in Africa as well as afkri who have operations in about eight or nine countries in Africa in Africa and they're actually the biggest owner of grain storage on the continent have major aspirations to take the financial services leg of this deeper and deeper into the African continent don't forget that afkri is also the biggest John Deere dealer outside of the United States in the world the the availability of this equipment to farmers and small-scale farmers in smart ways with the financing background and the financing packages that can go with it really create some something quite interesting I believe in in how food security will be enhanced over the next generation but now you're doing all of this and and I think what you're doing is is fantastic in terms of that but when we come back I'd like to if we can just have a little bit of a chat about your existing because you were an existing bank the Bank of Athens you had clients you had business clients so when we come back let's tell a little bit about that what's involved it is a Monday night my guest in studio CEO of the brand-new grow bank spirit Georgiopolis and spirit just before the break we were chatting and I said but you know you were Bank of Athens it was an institution for many many years now you've grown and you and you should have targeting and renaming and you it's basically a new bank what about all the clients that were there they are very much there are they today did you should have go through some sort of obviously I'm assuming you went through a process they didn't just wake up one day and found that they were banking with another bank absolutely not so we we consulted quite extensively with the existing client base most of whom are large business owners family-run businesses many of whom who are already in the food trade somewhere in that value chain but even those who were not in the in the food value chain were consulted and basically what we said to them is although we're putting this focus on the bank because we think it's important the the things that we've always done very well in servicing family-run businesses don't go away so we will continue to service those customers in the same way if not even better over over the next while and all of them are pretty comfortable they like they like the offering so we we're good about that I think that's that's pretty and it's a sign of the loyalty of the customer as well because I mean these days customers are a fickle bunch of people and then you know with the digital age people have it's made things so much easy and so much more research gets done so you know for you that the loyalty thing these days doesn't really happen and I think it's a testament that you say that the majority of them have have remained with you so you had to change and you know when you think about it you go okay they're not called go bank I think it's a fantastic bank etc etc but then suddenly you get to thinking as I've just done about all the things that you have to change how's that process going I mean you've got all the branches that you had to change you know that's all the branding digital sites customer engagement how have you done that done and dusted all sorted all sorted in this short space of time we did it very fast we had some very smart people helping us and the team at the bank is has been focused remember this transaction may have been launched on the 8th of April but the deal was actually signed two years ago so there's a whole regulatory process from the Competition Commission to the Reserve Bank to the Minister of Finance who have to approve the acquisition of shares in a bank like this and so we had this time to prepare ourselves and think about it do the branding exercise work out what the systems impacts we're going to be talking to existing customers all of that stuff so it's not as if you know we did it in 24 hours we've been working on it for a while but yeah it's done and dusted so the bank is the bank because I mean yeah Bank of Athens you had a couple of branches around the country not many and you've done it and I've got to tell you it's very clear that you put a lot of thought into this from the logo to your website to the look of the website and and you've said it a couple of times and I wanted to mention that in terms of even your website when you go onto that website you get that family feeling I mean you can actually see who you're going to be talking to you've got names of people you talked about relationship banking sure so and and I remember the old days when you had a personal banker and that personal banker was an actual human being that you could go into the bank and see these days for a lot of institutions a personal banker is more of a term than an actual person where do you guys stand on that so let me be fair and say that banking as we used to know it doesn't exist anymore for the simple reason that technology has overtaken a whole lot of things that people used to do and actually for the better because it's brought the cost of banking down and it and it's made things a lot more convenient and more accessible to a lot more people but in the business space so remember that you were talking about a personal banker yeah if you think about our bank which is servicing businesses it's a slightly different angle that you have to take so a digital platform and all of the technology that goes around making things convenient for your business customers is a must if you don't have that you're not even in the game so you have to have that but we believe that actually at the center of everything is this thing what that we call the relationship manager this person who has a deep understanding of how to read the customer's balance sheet and income statement can advise the customer on investment decisions so if you run a business you don't want to speak to somebody if you're moving money around or managing your payroll or anything like that you want to be able to do that using artificial intelligence internet banking mobile banking and so on and so forth so that's not stuff you want to speak to your banker about but if you're buying trucks you replacing your fleet or you're buying a new factory or you're buying a new farm or whatever it is you don't do that on mobile banking you actually need to speak to people who can advise you on your investment decisions and how to spend your money and that's where the relationship manager comes in so that stays very close to to where we believe the the offering has to be and our relationship managers actually go to customers we don't have branches per se we don't ask customers to come and see us we go to the customers premises because we need to understand we've got a walk in their factory on their farm see the trucks it's kind of quite a tactile thing which is quite different but you've got to support that with very smart digital offerings to make convenience real but that makes so much sense I mean as you as you're talking about and I'm thinking as my friend that I that I discussed there that was was a farmer still is to all intents and purposes but to have that person be able to come to the farm because you know that's that's where you are you can't afford to go into town and I mean I remember for a lot of farmers it's it is it's this thing called going into town and it's quite a production so your people actually got to the to the factories to wherever and they will actually spend time with him there which I think is amazing because I like to know and I'm a fan of digital big fan of digital it's part of what I do when I'm not here is we run online and digital programs and we do chat bots and deliver and develop those things but I want to talk to a real person every now and again I want to know there's somebody real that's looking after my money transitioning from that though we've discussed this I think you guys have got a winner here it's a fantastic bank and just the way that you presented you got to go and see the website by the way we'll give that out at the end of the show but check out the website what happens now and then I'm gonna ask now because I've got a couple of messages on going who can you know how do you how do you join the bank can you join the bank somebody wants to know they thinking of starting a business would grow Bank be a bank for them somebody else's but I'm not in there in the agricultural industry can we speak to those things because I know people that are listening tonight they may have existing banks and they might want to be looking at changing that or starting a business how would you define who could come to you anyone who wants to run a business are there an existing business and if it's a new business if they've got something a cogent business plan that they can put on the table that will persuade us from a risk management perspective that it is worth lending their money to to start a business absolutely it doesn't have to be only in agriculture or only in food that is our main focus area so I won't I won't move away from that but if you are a business owner and you're looking for a high-touch smart digitally supported bank that can help you grow your business I think yeah we are the right people to talk to and it doesn't matter what industry you're in and definitely a business that's putting down even stronger and deeper roots in this beloved Africa of ours and I think that is vitally important because it shows that that people a lot cleverer than me have given this a lot of thought and I like to see that I'm not just being naive when I believe in South Africa and the future of Africa that they are the people as I said smarter than me that have done the research and know that this is happening where do you see grow bank going to in the next year or two spirit well the next year or two is actually quite a short horizon for a bank yes let's call it five to ten years I think I think there is no doubt in our minds that we will be the preeminent food and agricultural bank in South Africa and we will in the next five to ten years I think we will have made a mark on the African continent with our shareholder partners and and that's that's something that you as CEO you're responsible for driving that vision with a team of very smart people I would guess that they would be very smart to be in banking I started out in the bank after I finished my national service and I started out in those days they had just just they were just transitioning over to first national bank it was the original Barclays sure and I think I was probably the worst banker on the face of the planet I just I couldn't do it I just I don't know just wasn't for me and yet I was fascinated by it but it was it was very interesting in those days and I was based in Wadeville so we had some of the big the big corporates their consul glass and all of those people were around there yeah this I did the savings and investments in those days sure when they still had books that you had to write in I was giving away my age big time you but I enjoyed that because I enjoyed seeing how people actually saved and and were able to do some amazing things with their money banking has changed so much and I think it's brilliant that you that you're gonna do that ah there we go hang on somebody else is just to keep getting message in you see I like this I like people who take initiative hi listening to you and spur are there any staffing needs they are always stopping me so I tell you what we're gonna give out and and you know what thumbs up asking because hey yeah why not so what we'll do is we'll give out can we give up like the website you must be able to get onto the web website and and see to apply there or absolutely so the website is is is comprehensive and if you're interested in working for grow bank you can go onto the website there's a there's a link there to allowing you to contact the bank to and to you know upload cvs and a whole lot of things like that we also advertise posts that are going at this point in time so yeah I think it's a brilliant idea the website is fantastic and I mean the bit I like the most is you know you can you can call and they give you somebody's photo and a number or send us an email and we'll email you back yeah I like that because now I know who I'm going to be dealing with yeah and and I think it's brilliant it brings it back to that that family thing so the website we're gonna give that out just before we go though I like to ask my guest this because I think it just helps us understand guests a little bit better we've mentioned we're both Benoni boys one thing about Spiro that people wouldn't generally know share something with me Wow I used to be a skateboarding champion in my teen years yes I was I won quite a few competitions so there we go one of the boogaloo's gang yeah absolutely early days skateboarder yeah there you go you see we all have stories and I'm gonna let spirit skateboard off now and can enjoy some dinner because I think it's been a long day for him thank you so much for coming in and having a chat to us I love everything about this bank I love what it stands for I love what you guys are doing if you'd like to find out more it's www.growbank.co.za it's an incredible website well with a visit and hey have a look and see because I tell you I've got a good feeling about the bank hopefully you'll be back in the not too distant future and chat to us about some of the exciting strides you're making thank you David I really had fun fellow Benoni boys Spiro Georgiopolis thank you so much for coming in tonight and we wish you all the best going forward thank you