Margaret Nienaber is Standard Bank Group’s Chief Operating Officer, spanning 20 countries on the African continent and 6 international centres. Standard Bank is the largest Bank by assets on the African continent.
Prior to this, Margaret was the Chief Executive of Standard Bank’s Wealth division, a business that has been recognised as Africa’s Best Bank for Wealth Management by Euromoney and boasts the largest Bancassurance arrangement on the African continent. Prior to joining Standard Bank 15 years ago, Margaret served on the Executive teams of Santam Insurance, Hannover Reinsurance and CEO of Compass Insurance.
In 2013, she was recognised as the Most Influential Woman in South African Business and Government (Financial Sector), and during her years in the insurance industry, was a board member of the South African Insurance Association and President of the Insurance Institute of South Africa.
Margaret is a member of the World50 community, an invitation-only forum for senior executives of globally respected organisations. She is also the vice president of the International Women’s Forum of South Africa (Chapter of the global IWF), whose objective is to nurture and develop a pipeline of the next generation of women leaders. Moreover, she was part of the UNICEF Influential Women’s Circle and sat on the Mastercard EMEA Advisory Board. She has contributed thought leadership to two books on Leadership (‘The Future of Leadership’ and ‘Lead with Heart’). Previous training includes time at the Disney Leadership Institute and Future Ready strategies at MIT, Boston (2018). She is also a Trustee on the Board of the National Children’s Theatre.
Margaret holds a BCompt degree (University of the Free State, 1995), BCompt Hons degree (UFS, 1996), Certificate in the Theory of Accounting (Unisa, 1996) and qualified as a Chartered Accountant (SA) in 1997. Margaret is very proud of her grounding at Eunice Girls School in Bloemfontein, where she was head girl in 1991. She also won Matriculant of the Year in 1991, the proud winner of a red Citi Golf. Margaret is a grateful daughter, proud wife and mother on 13-year-old twin tween girls. She is also three times class mom.
