Fin24 reports that Sasfin Holdings has cut 40 people from its struggling business and commercial banking unit, including the division's former chief executive Sandile Shabalala.

The company indicated in its annual integrated report on Wednesday that, following a strategic review, it became clear that certain components of its business and commercial banking division had failed to achieve the scale necessary to generate meaningful returns on equity. As a result, "tough decisions" were taken in January 2023 to streamline the unit, resulting in the collapse of an entire management layer within the business and commercial banking division. That resulted in Sasfin eliminating specialised lending from its business and commercial banking unit and dropping its team of broad-based business bankers. The reduction in staff was executed through mutual separation agreements and a formal section 189 retrenchment process. Among the unit's casualties were its former chief executive, Shabalala, who only joined Sasfin in January 2022 specifically to spearhead its growth. The exit of Shabalala, who was CEO of TymeBank from 2016 to 2019 and managing executive of business banking at Nedbank for 11 years, marked a retreat from Sasfin's previously communicated plans to disrupt SA’s business and commercial banking landscape. Sasfin's plan is to now refocus its business and commercial banking unit on products such as trade and debtor finance where it believes it can compete more effectively.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Garth Theunissen at Fin24

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