Absa Group is bringing in new blood at the executive level, hiring Sitoyo Lopokoiyit from Safaricom’s M-PESA to run its Personal and Private Banking division while promoting two internal executives to beefed-up governance roles.
Lopokoiyit, who most recently ran M-PESA Africa and served as Chief Financial Services Officer at Safaricom, will take over Personal and Private Banking on April 1.
He spent over a decade building M-PESA into Africa’s biggest fintech platform, which now serves 56 million customers and 5 million businesses.
During his time there, he launched the M-PESA Super App, Fuliza, and cut deals with PayPal and AliPay to expand the platform’s reach.
Before leading M-PESA Africa (a joint venture between Safaricom and Vodacom), Lopokoiyit held several senior positions at Safaricom starting in 2011, including running operations in Tanzania and heading up M-PESA’s strategy and business development.
His work on financial inclusion got him inducted into the 11:FS Hall of Fame, which recognizes people who’ve made a real dent in how financial services work.
The hire indicates Absa wants someone who knows how to scale digital financial services and thinks beyond traditional banking. Lopokoiyit’s track record is all about customer-facing products, mobile money, and making financial services work for small businesses and underserved markets.
On the governance front, Prabashni Naidoo is moving from Group Chief Internal Audit Executive to a newly created Group Chief Governance Officer role starting March 1.
The position consolidates Legal, Compliance, and Group Secretariat under one umbrella. Naidoo has deep experience in audit, risk, and regulatory matters across the organization.
Taking her old job is Rushdi Solomons, who gets promoted to Group Chief Internal Audit Officer. Solomons has been Managing Executive for Compliance Strategy, Regulatory Relations and Governance since June 2025, and before that was COO in Group Internal Audit when he joined Absa in 2020.
He previously worked at Deloitte, South Africa’s Auditor-General office, and PwC.
Fatima Newman joins as Chief Compliance Officer, also effective March 1. She has 28 years of experience across risk, compliance, and governance, including a stint as Chief Risk Officer at EOH Group.
She’s also held senior roles at MTN South Africa and previously worked at Absa before.
The moves come after Absa finalized its refocused Pan-African strategy and reflect a mix of external hiring to fill capability gaps and internal promotions from what CEO Kenny Fihla called the bank’s succession planning pipeline.
The governance reshuffling suggests Absa is consolidating oversight functions and putting more weight behind compliance and control as it pushes into new markets and products.
