South African fintech, Ukheshe appoints Lee Ziervogel as COO

Ukheshe has appointed its former president of customer delivery and success, Lee Ziervogel, as chief operating officer.

In today’s fast-paced, wealth-driven world where customer service often ends at the point of sale, true business success requires solid, customer-centric ethics.

This is the belief of Lee Ziervogel, the newly appointed Chief Operating Officer of fintech enablement company Ukheshe. “This is especially important for a fintech company like Ukheshe. It’s important to manage our customers’ journeys with our highly technical products, because if they’re successful, so are we.”

“I love being surrounded by an ethically sound team that operates on these sound business principles. One of Ukheshe’s core focus areas is enabling financial inclusion and enriching lives,” she said.

Ziervogel’s people-centered approach ensured her success as president of customer delivery and success at Ukheshe before she stepped into the role of COO. She explains: “I led the part of the organization responsible for ensuring that we deliver on our promises to our customers. This has to happen from multiple perspectives – regulatory and compliance, development, legal, marketing and all necessary cross-functional to deliver promises to customers is at the heart of any business success and something I look forward to continuing in my new role.”

Of course, this required an end-to-end understanding of the organization, which put her in the perfect position to take on the role of COO. “My previous role involved meeting regularly with all the unit managers, unpacking what they were doing, understanding what their offering was, establishing what they required to implement customer solutions, and then putting together a framework that enabled visibility and reporting across all projects. it meant taking care of the customer journey from developing the ongoing relationship with the customer to providing the support and processes to ensure their success.”

Although she is a qualified Chartered Accountant, Ziervogel’s background saw her move towards a more people-centric approach. She has worked in multiple industries including financial services, technology and mobile, as well as public sector and professional services where she led business transformation and strategy execution, along with solution design and implementation.

“I have a knack for bringing talent together. I always joke that I’m really a talent manager. My focus is on inviting talented people to stand up, solve problems and make a tangible difference. And in Ukheshe, I’m happy every day over people’s smart and ready-made solutions in this regard.”

The COO role will give her the opportunity to enable such solutions more quickly, she believes. “I am most looking forward to having the broad focus that will allow me to unlock value and drive rapid growth. And I am excited to work with the Ukheshe founders to drive a dream of enabling embedded finance through a fintech- world-class platform.”

Recently, Ukheshe partnered with Paycorp to increase cardless cash withdrawals at Cash Express branded ATMs. Earlier in February 2022, the fintech achieved a Level One Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) rating in South Africa.

B-BBEE is a government policy to promote economic transformation and increase the economic participation of black people – African, Colored and Indian people who are South African citizens – in the South African economy.