Paul Hanratty and his predecessor Ian Kirk both ended up at Sanlam quite unexpectedly. In Kirk’s case, as deputy CEO of Liberty, it was widely predicted that he would end up as successor to Myles Ruck when the former merchant banker took early retirement in 2006.
Hanratty had ended up in London to run the core life and savings business for Old Mutual plc. In both cases they were beaten to the job by Standard Bank lifer Bruce Hemphill, who, to be fair, was a competent member of the bank’s executive bench, and less prickly than either Kirk or Hanratty.
Arguably, Liberty probably wouldn’t have slipped into its current obscurity in the Standard Bank Group if Kirk had been made CEO.
But even Hanratty must acknowledge that Hemphill was the right choice for the “managed separation” of Old Mutual Plc, which sold its American asset management business (by then called Brightsphere) and unbundled its holding in Nedbank and the UK wealth manager Quilter.
Hanratty was soon snapped up as a Sanlam nonexecutive director. So, when Kirk’s five-year term finished at the end of 2020, Hanratty was clearly a very strong candidate.
Those of us who live in Cape Town have got to recognise that our main market is in Gauteng
— Paul Hanratty
Roddy Sparks, Hanratty’s predecessor as head of Old Mutual South Africa, described Hanratty as a “take no prisoners” manager. Hanratty, a highly driven actuary, built his reputation at Old Mutual with the launch of Investment Frontiers in 1997, an innovative endowment policy product that was an effective competitor to the rising unit trust industry. He later ran Old Mutual’s core retail middle market business, where he was popular with both the tied agents and independent brokers.
Soon after getting the job of MD of Old Mutual South Africa in 2006, Hanratty decided that Old Mutual would move its head office to Joburg and away from the splendid isolation of Cape Town. The top 200 executives moved to Gauteng. This was in 2006, long before the era of MS Teams and Zoom. He has decided not to repeat that exercise at Bellville-based Sanlam.
Under Kirk, Sanlam had already created a split head office. Santam had had one for decades, as its speciality businesses such as engineering and liability needed to be in Joburg to be close to their corporate clients.
In spite of the trend of semigration, when Sanlam acquired Absa Asset Management the majority of the Absa investment professionals opted to stay in Joburg and work from Sanlam’s Alice Lane, Sandton, offices.
Today, half of the Sanlam senior executive team is black and based in Alice Lane, Sandton, which makes sense as most of the potential growth is in the mass market.
Some of those executives moved from Old Mutual to join Hanratty, such as head of mass market Bongani Madikiza and head of corporate Kanyisa Mkhize. They are both based in Joburg, along with the chief actuary and risk officer Lotz Mahlangeni and FD Abigail Mukhuba.
“Those of us who live in Cape Town have got to recognise that our main market is in Gauteng,” Hanratty tells the FM. “Though I have no doubt that Cape Town will remain our administrative hub. Our staff down here is the backbone of the business.”
Even in the Old Mutual great trek north, Hanratty did not try to move the admin staff up to Gauteng, nor the asset managers who are notoriously attached to the Cape lifestyle. But Hanratty was ruthless with executives in group finance, sales and the mass market business. They had no choice, though some chose early retirement instead.
Hanratty’s appointment shows how far Sanlam has moved from the days when it was the economic arm of the National Party. Twenty years or so earlier, it would have been difficult for a non-Afrikaner to run Sanlam. The bilingual Desmond Smith was MD in the 1990s, but very much No 2 to executive chair Marinus Daling.
Soon after Johan van Zyl was appointed in 2003, he instructed that all official correspondence would be in English. Van Zyl on paper should have been the archetypal establishment Afrikaner. An agricultural economist, at the age of just 39 in 1996 he was appointed vice-chancellor of the University of Pretoria. He joined the business world only in 2001 as CEO of Santam.
Van Zyl removed the portraits of the founding directors of Sanlam (all white, of course) from the Sanlam foyer in Bellville, the rather dismal Cape Town suburb where Sanlam still has its main hub — though it now allows selected Cape staff to work in more salubrious locations such as Claremont.
In spite of the trend of semigration, when Sanlam acquired Absa Asset Management the majority of the Absa investment professionals opted to stay in Joburg and work from Alice Lane.
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