Eight leadership questions for Jeanette Marais, Momentum Group CEO

Jeanette Marais was appointed as CEO for Momentum Group in August 2023, making her the first female CEO of a large, listed life insurance and asset management group in South Africa. 

With an Executive MBA (cum laude) from the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Lausanne, Switzerland, and a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of the Free State, Jeanette gained valuable experience as a C-suite executive at various financial services firms in South Africa. She has a performance history of building strong, profitable businesses. 

Jeanette regards herself as a country girl who grew up on a farm in the Free State. She is married to Johann Cilliers, who runs their farm on the West Coast near Paternoster. Making a difference in the lives of clients, her colleagues and empowering women are what energise her daily.

Below are eight questions and answers by Jeanette:

What Does Women’s Day and the recognition of August as Women’s Month signify: 

Women’s Month is about ensuring that the women who come after us, inherit fewer limitations and more possibilities than we did. Every year in August, Momentum contributes by running our She Owns Her Success campaign which focuses on empowering women, specifically around their finances. We even flip the M in our logo to say WOMENtum. This year, our theme is ‘Success has a number’.

Regardless of how you define success, it becomes more achievable if you don’t just hope that your future will turn out as you wish, but that you actively plan, protect and own it. Every goal has a number to strive towards. It’s more than a feeling: It can be acted on, measured, planned and protected. Specifically for women, who traditionally were not as financially empowered as men, we encourage them to turn their ambitions into action. I always say: A man is not a financial plan. It’s critical that every woman manages her own finances. 

Q1.  Where It Began

My leadership journey started long before I had a leadership title. It began when I realised that leadership is not about position, but about putting up your hand and taking responsibility. In my first job, I worked in the actuarial team developing products. I was the one who answered the phone when clients or financial advisers called.

While my colleagues avoided dealing with their queries, it was important to me to understand their needs and how we could serve them better. I realised that we’re not dealing with policy numbers or transactions, but with human beings with hopes, fears and dreams. That’s where I started to obsess about how we make our clients feel.

Those early years taught me that leadership is ultimately about purpose, and in our business, our purpose is to build and protect our clients’ financial dreams. That belief still shapes how I lead today.

Q2.  The First 90 Days

When I was appointed as Group CEO in August 2023, I was the first female CEO of a large, listed life insurance and asset management group in South Africa. 

Our Group never had a purpose that tied us together. We had visions and targets, but not a deep understanding of what every employee needs to connect with emotionally. The first and biggest thing I set out to do, was to unite 16 000 employees behind one purpose: To build and protect our clients’ financial dreams.

We created the purpose from the understanding that we are a business with heart, and we understand that behind every transaction, every interaction, there is a human being with hopes, dreams and fears. 

We launched the purpose and went through a deep process for every employee to make it real for themselves. This entailed embedding a fundamental change to our business, and it has resulted in tangible positive impact – not just on our clients, but also on our employees and our business success. 

Q3.  Leading Through Pressure - Present Day

There’s a numbers challenge and a human challenge: 

Numbers: How do you take the Momentum Group to the next level of growth while the economy is hardly growing, consumers are under immense pressure due to rising living costs, global conflicts and uncertainty are escalating to wars that we could not have imagined, and locally, South Africa continues to face structural challenges caused by decades of neglect. It’s during these circumstances that we are expected to grow our business, while keeping up with increasing expectations from clients.

Human: How do you remain deeply human in an increasingly transactional world. People make the mistake of thinking we’re in the business of money. But we’re in the business of high emotion, where we deal with our clients when they are going through the most traumatic emotional times of their lives: When they just found out that they’d lost a loved one. When they heard they have cancer. When they are dealing with the shock of being permanently disabled. When they were in an accident. When they worry about being able to afford to retire. The leaders and organisations that will win in the future are those that combine growth with genuine care for people.

Q4.  The Cost of Leading

There is no work-life balance in my life. My work demands  a lot of me, and not just of me: My husband, Johann, has made many sacrifices for my career through the years. I could NEVER have done this, or achieved this position if not for his support!  

He is okay with having a 2-days-a-week marriage and to heat up food in the microwave every night, because he shared my dream of what is possible for me.  He is big enough to give me the space I need to live my dream, and do this job.

Our reality is that I leave for Gauteng on Mondays and return on Fridays, and then I hit the road from Cape Town to our farm in Paternoster where Johann lives.  Of course, he will tell you that he loves me more because he only has to be married to me for two days a week!

But it is tough on both of us, and we know that we signed up for quite a few years of this life! But why would you not do it – it is everything we both had worked for, and it is the opportunity of a lifetime. 

Q5.  Being Underestimated

There were many examples, especially at the start of my career. One that stands out, was when I was still very junior, and in a room full of quite senior men. One of them asked me to pour the tea. I knew it was a make or break moment for me, because how I responded, was going to label me and follow me forever after that. I poured the tea, and I told him it was the last time, and that I like coffee, with a little bit of milk and no sugar.

How you respond in the moment is very important. Own your emotions, or they will own you! You also have to be BRAVE enough to raise your hand, to find your voice, and to stand up to be seen. Your worth is not determined by the assumptions other people make about you. Confidence comes from competence, preparation and self-belief.

That experience also shaped how I lead today. I am very aware of the assumptions we make about people. We all carry unconscious biases. My responsibility as a leader is not only to challenge those biases when they affect me, but to ensure I am not creating barriers for others.

Leadership is about creating opportunities for talent to be recognised, regardless of gender, background or circumstance.

 Q6.  Insurance, Made Personal

My passion for women and money started when I was very young. I grew up on a farm in the Free State. My mom left her teaching job to support my dad on the farm and raise 5 children. My first memories of money are about how tough it was for my mom to be totally financially dependent on my dad, and how she had to ask him for every cent of money she needed for our household. 

I was 5 years old when I wrote in my booklet: “I will never ask a man for money”. This formed the foundation for how I think about money. I ended up wanting to help people, but mostly women, with managing and investing their money, so that they can be financially empowered and unshakeable. 

I coined the phrase: “A man is not a financial plan”. I am very concerned about the number of women I know who depend on their husbands to manage the household finances. It’s important that women are informed about money matters in general, but that they at least know what’s going on in their own finances, are part of the decision-making process on their own financial futures, and take ACTION to enable their financial success. Women cannot afford to be passive about their financial success – it impacts every other aspect of your life. 

Life happens, and the last thing you want is to discover that your financial planning is not in place when it is too late, and you left it to your partner to sort out.  To this day, I’m on a mission to help people get their financial affairs in order. I want every single South African to have a good financial plan in place to make sure they are okay when something terrible happens, or by the time they retire.  

 Q7.  The Advice You Needed

Bring your authentic self. That’s where your real influence lies. Brené Brown said: “True belonging does not require you to change who you are, it requires you to BE who you are.”

Don’t shrink your magic because the system is not ready for you. Don’t take away that unique edge you bring to make others comfortable. Be authentically YOU. The world doesn’t need smaller women. It needs braver ones.

Also, success is not one big moment, or one big event. Success is built through hundreds of thousands of small actions, and all the little things add up to become big things. My favourite saying is: Raindrops make oceans. Every email, every interaction – it has to be done to the best of your ability, and it will all add up. 

 Q8. What is the one book you would recommend to your audience, and why?

Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara. It’s about how Will and his business partner turned their restaurant (Eleven Madison Park) into the world’s best restaurant. 

When I read this book the first time, it felt like validation for so many things I have believed in. In my own life, people have called me unreasonable not as a compliment, but to shut me down! But Will says in the book: “Let it be our rally cry, because no-one who ever changed the world did so by being reasonable! You need to be unreasonable to see a world that doesn’t yet exist.”

The lessons are framed through hospitality, but they apply equally to leadership, business and life. In a world obsessed with efficiency, metrics and technology, it reminds us that human connection remains the differentiator. It enabled me to lead all our employees to truly obsess about how we make our clients feel.