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For Clarke, the idea of Absa CIB’s regional structure came when he started working for Absa CIB in the Western Cape. “When I arrived here in 2015 our colleagues were sitting in five different buildings,” he says. “Even though they were serving one client, they were all in silos. The next eye-opener came when I went to a client with one of our bankers. The client had a query about a charge on a current account. It wasn’t big. The effective ask was for us to write off a few hundred rand. But the banker couldn’t commit to doing it in the meeting. He had to go back to the office and speak to someone in Johannesburg first. That’s when I knew that we needed to relook at our regional model. We wanted our people to have that agency.”

The core of Absa CIB’s regional strategy was to build a regional structure that included coverage, product and enablement functions around clients. “We’re client-led, so our clients tell us what they need,” says Clarke. “Our regional teams are also centre enabled, as there are some competencies that we don’t do in the region, and here we rely on our colleagues in the centre to deliver that expertise. We do influence, and we do tell our central teams what our regional clients want and what a good strategy for each region looks like.”

That regionally delivered model enables Absa CIB to be much more responsive and accountable to the bank’s clients. “Our Group strategy emphasises distributed leadership,” says Clarke. “That doesn’t just apply to the leadership within the teams in Johannesburg. It’s about how you distribute your teams across the country. Regional businesses are the ultimate example of distributed leadership.”