Board of Directors

Johan Kestens is a Senior executive with unique blend of experience in marketing, business development, corporate finance, across many industries, notably financial services and electronics. Excellent track record in attracting and developing talent. Global network of business relationships in finance and electronics.

Currently, Johan Kestens is at SAP Head of Financial Services, encompassing Banking and Insurance. He started at SAP in January 2008 in the role of Chief Operating Officer, Global Line of Business Banking,.

In this role, he leads development, marketing, pre sales, and is also overseeing the finance and human resources function for the banking activities of SAP worldwide. With offices in Belgium and Germany, Johan oversees several hundred developers, marketing people and sales experts.

Initially, following an academic career, Alewyn’s career in banking started in 1979 where he was employed as a statistician and operations researcher at the United Building Society. Moving through various general management levels, Alewyn was appointed executive director of the United Group (which became ABSA in 1991) in early 1990, with responsibility for group management services, technology and research.
Following the ABSA merger in 1993 he fulfilled various executive positions, ending as group executive director accountable for retail, infrastructure, and IT in 1998.
He joined Standard Bank in 2001.

Alewyn played a major role in the ABSA merger, both as the business project manager as well as the project manager, and sponsoring executive of the massive information technology project that merged the 7 ABSA IT systems into a single integrated operation.

Currently his simultaneous portfolio is that of:
Chief Operating Officer for Standard Bank Africa , accountable for operations, IT, finance, human resources, bank acquisition integration, the retail and card business for all 16 Standard Banks in Africa
The co-ordinator of payment products and directions in the Standard Bank group
Global Chief Technology officer including, strategy, architecture, software and hardware development, projects and service delivery, and research and development.

Alewyn was recognised for his contribution over the years by the ICT industry in 2003 as the “ICT Leader of the Year”, the first award of its kind in the industry.
Alewyn played an active role in the international card industry activities and was at various times a member of the Maestro and Cirrus global operations committee, also a board member of the VISA Central & Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa Region, and a member of the Global Board of Directors of MAESTRO International.
He was the Chairman of the Payment Association of SA during 1996 to 1998, as well as the Clearing Bankers Association in 1997 and played a major role in the set-up of the National Payment System, which regulates the payment industry in SA.
Alewyn currently serves as a member of the SAP Banking Advisory Board as well as the CIO advisory board of Accenture Europe.

Harold is responsible for SunGard’s businesses focusing on alternative investments; banks & corporations; capital markets and investment banking; institutional asset management; and SunGard’s European consulting practice. He also oversees SunGard’s international distribution of products and services outside of North America and Western Europe. With territory managers in Japan, China, ASEAN, ANZ, Middle East and Southern Africa.

From 2005-2007 Harold was group chief executive officer of SunGard Europe. From 2001 to January 2005, he headed the SunGard Investment Management Systems in Europe. From 1996 to 2001, he held various senior management positions with SunGard overseeing a number of SunGard’s European investment-support systems businesses. Harold founded and headed a Geneva-based wealth management systems business that SunGard acquired in 1996.

Harold is based in Geneva, Switzerland. He speaks four languages and is a qualified accountant.

Dr. Thomas Mangel is member of the board of Postbank Systems AG and is with Deutsche Postbank AG since 1995. After several responsibilities in Postbank’s former IT-Infrastruktur and –Operations department Thomas Mangel was initial board member of Deutsche Postbank’s overall IT-supplier Postbank Systems AG.

Postbank Systems delivers all IT-Services for Postbank group including Operations, Projectmanagement, Application-developement and -integration. Thomas Mangel is responsible for the Development Departement which includes Projectmanagement, Testing- and Qualitymanagement, Portfolio- and Releasemanagement. Postbank systems has a sound track record where the well published successful project of migrating all of Postbank’s corebanking systems to SAP is an outstanding example.
Thomas Mangel has his Dr. rer. nat. in mathematics, living married with two kids near Bonn.

David Vander is the worldwide managing director of Banking for Microsoft Corp based in Redmond.

Vander is responsible for driving and managing Microsoft’s worldwide industry and vertical strategy and its execution for the Banking market. Specifically, Vander oversees the industry strategy, marketing, solution development, partner development, field readiness, thought leadership, and executive relations, ensuring that the full extent of Microsoft’s vision and value proposition is realized by Banking institutions globally.

Vander has been with Microsoft for almost six years as an integral part of Microsoft’s worldwide Financial Services Group. Vander’s background is as a strategist within financial services specializing in business transformation around technology, but combines this with a strong focus on strategic execution.

Vander has over eighteen years of experience developing business strategies, strategic infrastructure planning and implementing technology projects which have included bespoke and package implementation, enterprise process design and management, applications management and systems selection for a range of clients in the financial services industry.

Vander has extensive experience and knowledge on the evolving challenges and opportunities presented to the Banking Industry today and how institutions might prepare themselves for the future.

During his entire career, Vander has continued to educate himself and has four degrees including a Masters Degree in Engineering, a Masters Degree in IT and an MBA.

Steve Van Wyk (1958) received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Accounting and Business Administration at the Central University of Iowa in Pella, his birthplace.

After graduation he joined Philips Petroleum (1981-1988) and Pella Windows and Doors (1990-1993) in diverse IT and internal audit functions. At Deloitte & Touche (1993-1996) in Chicago, Van Wyk led a team of consultants engaged in IT assessment and related advisory work. Van Wyk spent 10 years (1996-2006) in diverse IT management functions for the global financial services provider Morgan Stanley in New York. Finally, as Chief Information Officer and Chief Operations Officer of the Retail Division, he was responsible for developing systems, infrastructure and delivering back office operations globally.

Steve Van Wyk started at ING in March 2006 as Chief Information Officer for ING Insurance Americas. In September 2007, Van Wyk became Head of Operations & Information Technology Banking and joined the Retail & Private Banking Management Team. Van Wyk is known for his extensive track record in leading and building world-class information technology operations for complex organizations.