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Saki Diza
Chief Risk Officer: Risk Management
Sakhi is not new to the Land Bank, he re-joined the Land Bank Group on 20 September 2016 in the position of General Manager: Corporate Credit. He is a qualified agricultural economist with a Master’s degree. He has a diverse range of experience within the risk and lending environment, cutting across-development, commercial and corporate agricultural finance. and managerial skills within credit granting environment. He started his career as agricultural economist in 2002 managing development projects in the Western Cape-linking small scale farmers to markets (local & export markets) and access to technical support through relationships with large corporate players and agro-processors (value chain role players).
He subsequently joined ABSA Bank as an agri-specialist in agri-business, financing medium agri-businesses, and development farmers contributing to transformation. He later moved to Land Bank where he served in various roles such as investment specialist, head of sales team, and credit manager. After his stint at Land Bank he further moved to Standard Bank as part of a senior credit risk team in the Agri-Business unit based in head office, responsible for the agri-business portfolio within South Africa, where he held personal lending mandate of R90m plus discretionary limits, on each agri-business, extending finance to (mega farmers, agro-processors & development farmers across South Africa).
This included supporting on and off balance sheet activities, forex and export related financing products for each client. He also served as an alternate chair on Agri-BEE Credit committee advancing funding to development and transformation sector. He further played a role in mentoring and guiding credit managers, risk managers and risk/compliance offers within the agribusiness portfolio during his six year tenure at the Bank. Part of his role also entailed proper governance-clean audits, effective risk management over the agri-portfolio is achieved with the support of risk and compliance officers. He further supported regional credit centres in an attempt to elevate risk assessment and risk culture in the regions.
He has strong track record in deal structuring, origination, and credit granting across all agri-segments, small, medium and large agri-businesses, structuring using various funding instruments such as debt, hybrid products such as (mezzanine or preference shares), equity instruments, and has exposure in end-end risk management, governance and compliance within financial sector.