PASSING IT ON

Newsflash | June 2026

Dear Colleagues

This month, we say a grateful farewell to Rodger Walters, who has stepped down from our Board, and welcome Sunette Mulder as his successor. The Academy’s work doesn’t pause, it simply gets carried forward by someone new.

We see the same thread running through so much of this edition. At Futuregrowth Asset Management, our partner spotlight this month, four ASISA Academy graduates are now doing the mentoring, training and space-making that someone once did for them.

Our IMACS@TSIBA students have just closed their textbooks on one phase of learning to open the door to another. Our Fezeka graduates are trading classroom sessions for job interviews. Even our IFA interns are taking everything they’ve absorbed this year and handing it straight back, in presentations, to the very mentors who taught them.

None of this happens by chance. It takes people willing to invest their time, their patience and their experience in someone who isn’t quite ready yet but soon will be.

Thank you, as always, for being part of that chain.

Warm regards,

Alicia Davids

Executive Director, ASISA Academy

Rodger Walters has stepped down from the Academy’s Board, having retired from ASISA at the end of 2025 and resigned his board seat this past April.

Under the Academy’s memorandum of incorporation, ASISA’s executive committee always holds a seat at our board table, and Rodger filled that seat for many years. We’re deeply grateful for his contribution and wish him well.

Stepping into his place is Sunette Mulder, ASISA’s Chief of Staff. Sunette, previously an ASISA Senior Policy Advisor: Investments, has consistently been one of the Academy’s “top” presenters: year after year, she’s the industry expert our programme champions of investment industry courses call on most often to present on topics relevant to their courses and her area of expertise.

We’re delighted to welcome her as a director.

Outgoing Director, Rodger Walters, and incoming Director, Sunette Mulder.

One business, four graduates: how Futuregrowth built a technical team on Academy fundamentals.

Naailah Kada came through the ASISA Academy’s IMACS@TSIBA programme in 2012. Thirteen years since she first started at Futuregrowth Asset Management, she heads up client operations and is now one of four Academy graduates at the firm.

“The fact that we have four TSIBA/ASISA Academy graduates within this complex, technical business says a lot about the fundamentals they’re given,” Kada says. Futuregrowth’s assets are intricate enough that the Academy built the company a bespoke short course combining investment administration training with a deep dive into collective investment schemes.

Kada believes there’s something specific the Academy instils that other graduates don’t always arrive with. “There’s a grit and a curiosity that runs through TSIBA,” she says, “and then once you’re in the industry, it all comes through – ask for understanding, so you can truly commit to mastery.”

That curiosity shows up differently in each of their three Academy hires.

Déjean Merckel, for instance, didn’t make it onto IMACS@TSIBA on his first attempt. A personal contact introduced him to the industry instead, with a six-month internship at Prudential Investment Managers (now M&G) that turned permanent. He only completed the IMACS course years later, with some good work experience on his side.

“It gave me the fundamentals of what happens on the investment side, the operations side, even insurance,” he says. Without that break, Merckel, now a trade support specialist, reckons he’d be working at his father’s printing business now. “I really had to grab at something that pushed me forward.”

Ntokozo Genu, also a trade support specialist, almost didn’t apply at all. As a marketing student, he assumed the programme was reserved for finance majors – until his mentor pushed him to try anyway. He ended up with more interview requests than anyone else in his cohort.

Genu has spent nearly four years moving through Futuregrowth, from a four-month internship to his current position in trade oversight. “We were encouraged to ask questions, like we were already in the boardroom,” he says. “If people were discussing something, you couldn’t just go and Google it – you had to know.”

He now returns to his old high school to tell other young people what’s possible: “People don’t always know this industry even exists,” he notes.

For Jeschime Karriem, who came through one of the programme’s earliest cohorts, the standout was a guaranteed practical placement at the end. “Everything about the course was new to me – the way of learning, having industry reps share real, real-time knowledge instead of just textbook theory,” she says.

Nearly a decade into the industry, but newer to Futuregrowth, Karriem is now a client operations specialist – and the first in her family to graduate, a milestone that pulled her own sibling into the same TSIBA pipeline.

“It’s about following the money,” she says of her work. “You don’t always see the individuals, but you know there’s an effect on people’s lives.”

From top left (clockwise): Naailah Kada, Jeschime Karriem, Ntokozo Genu, and Déjean Merckel.

IMACS@TSIBA Internship

As this newsletter reaches your inbox, our 2025/26 IMACS@TSIBA cohort will have just written their final exams, bringing the academic component of their Bachelor of Business Administration degree to a close.

We wish them every success as they head into a well-earned holiday before returning in July for work readiness training, ahead of their four-month internships beginning in August. We’ll have photos to share from those sessions next month.

Independent Financial Advisor (IFA) Internship

Congratulations to our interns who recently passed their RE5 exams – a significant regulatory hurdle on the road to becoming a qualified financial advisor.

From the left: Thato Masipa interning at CAEP, and Zibusiso Ngwenya interning at Centillion Wealth Advisory.

This month also saw our annual IFA presentations, where interns in Cape Town and Johannesburg stood up in front of their managers, mentors, and programme champions – Russell du Bois in Cape Town, Mike Clare in Johannesburg – to share what they’ve learned during their internship so far.

Each intern selects a topic, develops it with input from their manager and mentor, and then presents it within a tight time limit, fielding questions from the floor afterwards. It’s less about the topic itself and more about the underlying skill: taking in information and communicating it clearly and confidently, whether to an audience of one or a room full of people.

Interns get feedback on the spot, followed by written feedback, before moving into a group mentoring session with their mentors.

Interns based in regions where just a few interns and IFA practices participate get to do this exercise locally with their managers and ASISA Academy programme champion and mentor.

Some of the IFA interns who presented at different venues.

Fezeka Graduate Programme

Our current cohort of eight Fezeka graduates spent two days in Johannesburg this month for a development module facilitated by our implementing partner, Joint Prosperity.

Our Cape Town-based graduates flew up to join their Johannesburg counterparts for the session, and the whole cohort spent a morning with the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) over breakfast, learning directly from PIC representatives about the organisation and its role in asset management.

With the programme concluding in August, our graduates are also beginning to interview for permanent positions. 

Current cohort of eight Fezeka graduates at the PIC in Johannesburg.

We have more wonderful news to celebrate from the Fezeka Graduate Programme. Regomoditswe Moremedi from cohort 1, and Thandeka Moyo and Amy Moodley from cohort 2, have passed the challenging CFA Level 1 exam, a significant achievement that once again demonstrates the exceptional calibre of talent in this programme.

The CFA certificate is internationally recognised and notoriously difficult. We are immensely proud of these young women's dedication and achievement, and we congratulate them warmly on this milestone.

From the left: Regomoditswe Moremedi - Standard Bank Corporate and Investment Banking, Thandeka Moyo - Riscura, and Amy Moodley - Mentenova.

UCT Life Insurance Claims Assessors Short Course

We wrapped up the final sessions of our online UCT Life Insurance Claims Assessors Short Course this month, with delegates writing their exam at the beginning of July.

We’re happy to announce that the next iteration will also run online, via MS Teams, over 18 full-day sessions on Wednesdays, starting 8 July.

Life Insurance Fraud

We delivered an online Life Insurance Sprint focused on insurance fraud this month, attended by eight delegates from across the industry. Life Insurance Sprints are three-hour online interactive sessions covering advanced techniques, best practices and emerging trends relevant to professionals in the life insurance industry, and each one is recognised by the Insurance Institute of South Africa (IISA) for 3 CPD points.

Our next Sprint, coming up in July, will tackle a topical and fast-moving subject: AI in Life Insurance.

This month, we delivered seven single-fund Retirement Fund Trustee Education workshops:

• UNISA Retirement Fund – Cybersecurity & Retirement Funds
• Hospitality & General Provident Fund – Cybersecurity & Retirement Funds, Section 37C Death Benefits, and Trustee Governance & Ethics (Part 1)
• MEPF and Bokamoso – Trustee Governance & Ethics (Parts 1 & 2)
• A Pension Funds Act Section 37D workshop, offered to a range of funds

We also ran public workshops this month, covering the following topics:

• Investment Fundamentals (Part 1 & 2)
• Trustee Governance & Ethics (Part 1 & 2)

These workshops are delivered free of charge to retirement fund trustees, thanks to the support of the ASISA Foundation, and are registered with Batseta for CPD points.

Trustees from the Hospitality & General Provident Fund who attended the Cybersecurity workshop in June.

For a complete overview of learning opportunities, please visit the 2026 ASISA Academy Learning Calendar.

Contact us:

• General enquiries: learn@asisaacademy.org.za
• CEO: adavids@asisaacademy.org.za

ASISA Academy – Building the talent pipeline for South Africa’s savings and investment industry