Magda Wierzycka
Chief Executive Officer
BBusSc(Actuarial), PhDip(Actuarial), FFA, FASSA, CFP
Magda is an actuary with extensive experience in the field of investments. Prior to launching Sygnia, she was a director and Head of Institutional Business at Coronation Fund Managers for six years, where she was responsible for overseeing all the day-to-day activities of the institutional side of the company.
In 2003, when Sygnia was bought out by African Harvest (Pty) Ltd, she was appointed as the Chief Executive Officer of the African Harvest Group, including African Harvest Fund Managers. Under her stewardship African Harvest Fund Managers grew its assets under management from R10 billion to R33 billion, entering the ranks of the ten largest asset management companies in South Africa, and becoming the largest majority black owned asset manager in the country.
In 2006, she used the opportunity created by the corporate restructuring of the African Harvest Group to acquire control of Sygnia Asset Management, Sygnia Life and Sygnia Systems. Today the Sygnia Group's assets under management and administration services exceed R40 billion (up from R3 billion at the end of 2006). Sygnia services institutional clients in South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Prior to joining Coronation, Magda worked as an investments product development actuary at Southern Life, and was a director and a regional head of investment consulting at Alexander Forbes.
Niki Giles
Chief Operating Officer
BBusSc(Finance), CA(SA), CFA
Niki brings optimism in the face of any adversity. A positive thinker who refuses to admit defeat on any front, she is rigorous, precise and always looking for the most complete answer.
Ferdi Schenck
Niki Giles is both a Chartered Accountant and a Chartered Financial Analyst®. After completing her articles at their Cape Town office in 2001, Niki started her accounting career at Deloitte in London. In 2002 she was appointed to the position of manager within the Financial Services division, dealing exclusively with financial institutions. She oversaw and managed the audits of retirement funds, banks, asset management companies, collective investment schemes, insurance and reinsurance companies, hedge funds and private equity funds, as well as managing GIPS verification. In 2005 Niki accepted the position of Chief Financial Officer of African Harvest and a year later moved to Sygnia Asset Management, where she oversaw a period of tremendous financial growth and expansion. Her contribution proved to be so valuable that in 2009 she was promoted to the position of COO, overseeing both Finance and Administration. She has a wide-ranging understanding of the financial services industry, both in South Africa and abroad.
Simon Peile
Head: Investments
BBusSc(Actuarial), FFA, FASSA, CFP
Simon is the moral compass of Sygnia, bringing wisdom, experience and an unemotional approach to all decision making. He takes the lead in setting the standard of conduct required of other staff. An inspiring leader.
Willem van der Merwe
Simon is one of the founding members of Sygnia and a pioneer in introducing the concept of life-stage investing into South Africa.
Trained as an actuary, he gained a wealth of experience in retirement fund and investment consulting (including quantitative analysis and asset manager research) by consulting to a wide range of major corporate clients in South Africa, the United Kingdom and Australia.
Simon was a member of the Actuarial Society Retirement Matters Committee for many years, focusing on investment strategies for retirement funds. He was also the Head of Retirement Fund Consulting at South Africa's largest firm of Consultants and Actuaries prior to leaving to start Sygnia, where he developed the firm's methodology for advising institutional clients on their investment strategies. He spearheaded the development of their strategy regarding member-level investment choice implementation and was responsible for the design of a range of risk-profiled multi-manager portfolios underpinning life-stage and investment choice strategies. He left the world of actuarial consulting in 2003 to start Sygnia Asset Management. Simon heads up a dynamic, multi-manager investment team within Sygnia, with a particular focus on managing Sygnia's fund of hedge funds products.
Willem van der Merwe
Head: Investments
BBusSc(Actuarial), BCom(Honours in Financial Analysis), CFA
Willem is an amazing multi-tasker. Whether it is investments, quantitative analysis or software development, his skill set is awe-inspiring. Willem is always looking for new and innovative ways to enhance Sygnia's product offering and services and his analytical approach to problem solving compliments the rest of the Sygnia management team.
Joseph Potgieter
Willem is the Joint Head of Investments and one of the founding members of Sygnia Asset Management. At Sygnia Asset Management he oversees a dynamic investment team, which prides itself on delivering consistently impressive results in even the most challenging of business environments. Willem's nuanced quantitative background, coupled with extensive investment experience has also made him a key business strategist for Sygnia Systems. Together with Joseph Potgieter, he has been instrumental in the evolution of Sygnia's ground breaking investment administration software - Sygnia Platinum.
Prior to joining Sygnia in 2003 he was the Head of Quantitative Management at Coronation Fund Managers for six years. While at Coronation he developed a proprietary risk management framework for the internally managed hedge fund product, as well as designing and implementing the quantitative and qualitative analysis processes and software for their international fund of hedge funds operation. He has also successfully managed and implemented the first Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS) compliance project in South Africa.
Elize Klein
Head: Administration
BCompt (Honours in Accounting), CA(SA)
Elize bears the responsibility for Sygnia's administration function with extraordinary patience, efficiency and determination. A keen mind and a great team player.
Niki Giles
Elize Klein is the 'steady hand' behind Sygnia's dynamic team of administrators, responsible for processing over 2500 individual trades a month for corporate clients on three different continents. Trained as a Chartered Accountant, Elize started her career at Deloitte, completing her articles at their Cape Town office in 2004. She was recruited by African Harvest as a financial manager in 2005 and honed her financial skills in its Asset Management and Collective Investments Divisions. In 2006 she joined Sygnia Asset Management and was instrumental in setting up the financial infrastructure that has seen Sygnia rapidly grow its asset base. Her tremendous attention to detail, ability to juggle multiple priorities and commitment to client service across multiple time zones, led to her promotion to Head of Administration in 2009.
Ferdi Schenck
Head: Legal & Compliance
BCom (Law), LLB, CFP
Ferdi is the Ricky Gervais of Sygnia's office and his sense of humour and optimism make even the thorniest legal problem seem manageable - but don't be fooled - behind that jester demeanour lies a razor-sharp legal mind!
Simon Peile
Ferdi joined Sygnia in 2006 as Head of the Legal, Compliance and Risk Management department. Ferdi has extensive experience with regards to the regulatory environment within which Sygnia operates and provides invaluable input to the operational activities of the Group.
Prior to joining Sygnia Ferdi headed the Legal and Compliance department of the African Harvest Group. He joined African Harvest after spending five years at Citadel, a private wealth management business. At Citadel Ferdi was responsible for all the legal and regulatory compliance issues of the company.
Ferdi started his career with Old Mutual where he held various positions, amongst others that of legal advisor to the group's broker distribution division.
Joseph Potgieter
Managing Director: Sygnia Systems
BBusSc (Actuarial) BBusSc (Honours in Computer Science)
As far as Joseph is concerned there is nothing that is impossible or, at the very least, that cannot be automated! Meticulous, analytical, extremely dedicated and seemingly tireless - he has ensured that Sygnia remains at the forefront of global technological development.
Magda Wierzycka
Joseph is one of the founding members of Sygnia Systems and brings significant experience and subject-matter expertise to his role as the Managing Director of Sygnia Systems. Joseph joined Sygnia in 2003 and was instrumental in developing and implementing the Sygnia Platinum System across its operations. His expertise in the areas of investments and systems development has led to Sygnia Platinum being regarded as the premier multi-manager investment administration system in South Africa.
Joseph started his career at ABSA Consultants & Actuaries, where he spent two years developing and maintaining actuarial valuation programmes for retirement funds and short term insurance valuation purposes. He then moved to Ixchange as a Software Development Manager and Technical Consultant, where he developed and implemented ERP financial systems. After three years he moved to SDT Financial Software to consult on life product systems design and configuration, specialising in reinsurance and unitisation systems.
