In a response to mounting government pressure on the financial services sector, Absa and FirstRand this week lifted the wraps on major empowerment initiatives.
FirstRand unveiled a procurement-driven strategy, while Absa launched a R250-million fund to help aspiring entrepreneurs.
The initiatives pre-empt the financial services empowerment charter, due to be unveiled next week.
A FirstRand spokesperson said the group had chosen procurement as an empowerment tool because “it can be made to benefit more people, and directly helps in areas like skills upliftment”.
FirstRand has put in place a procurement council to oversee the sourcing of goods and services from suppliers who embrace black empowerment. Companies are rated by Empowerdex, the black-owned empowerment rating and research agency, to assess whether they are black-owned, empowered, black-influenced, engendered or community-based, in line with the Black Economic Empowerment Commission report.
The company has installed Scion, an electronic procurement system, to source goods and services.
Existing beneficiaries range from Terence Company, which makes gifts, to Prestige Cleaning Services, a subsidiary of listed services group Bidvest.
On Tuesday Absa unveiled a fund to help black businesses that cannot access finance by traditional means. The banking group will also provide fund- ing of between R300 000 and R10-million, requiring a relatively low internal rate of return of about 10%.
It will also hold a stake in some of the businesses it funds.
Other recent empowerment initiatives in the financial services industry include the R810-million purchase of a 25% stake in Investec by a black consortium, and a R350-million empowerment deal at Stanlib.