African Bank Limited and African Bank Holdings Limited have announced that Anbann Chetti has resigned as Group Chief Financial Officer, effective 11 September 2026, to pursue other opportunities. Chetti also steps down as an executive director from the boards of African Bank Limited, African All Cover Limited and African Bank Holdings Limited, and relinquishes his seats on the Assets and Liabilities Committee, the Special Projects and Large Exposures Committee, the Model Risk, Capital and Funding Crisis Committee, the Capital Raising Committee, and the Macro-Economic sub-committee, the group said in a joint SENS announcement lodged with noteholders under the JSE’s debt listings requirements.
The boards have appointed Given Bhutana Mabena as Acting Group CFO, subject to the required regulatory approvals, to steady the finance function while a permanent successor is sought. Mabena is a Chartered Accountant (SA) with an MBA from the University of the Witwatersrand and executive education from IMD Switzerland and London Business School, and spent eight years in audit and assurance at Deloitte before moving into banking. He most recently served as Chief Financial Officer of Everyday Banking at Absa Group before joining African Bank, where he has been Divisional Head of Unsecured Lending within personal banking, giving him direct internal knowledge of the bank’s credit book ahead of stepping into the group’s top finance role.
Chetti’s departure is the second senior executive exit at African Bank inside six months. Chief executive Kennedy Bungane was ousted in March 2026 following regulatory filing missteps, with interim chief executive Zweli Manyathi stepping in to replace him. Manyathi has since become the bank’s fourth chief executive in eight years, and the bank has reportedly waived its standard 65-year retirement age to extend his tenure beyond July 2026, a move that itself points to unresolved succession planning at the top of the organisation.
| Date | Change |
|---|---|
| March 2026 | CEO Kennedy Bungane ousted over regulatory filing errors |
| March 2026 | Zweli Manyathi appointed interim Group CEO |
| September 2026 | CFO Anbann Chetti resigns to pursue other opportunities |
| September 2026 | Given Mabena appointed Acting Group CFO |
The regulatory errors behind Bungane’s exit concerned African Bank’s mandatory Bankers’ Acceptance returns, the monthly financial and risk reports lenders file with the Prudential Authority. The mistakes were linked to the bank’s implementation of the Basel III+, or Basel 3.1, framework from 2024, which introduced new definitions for cured and impaired assets in place of the previous system of reporting gross assets and impairment levels separately. African Bank was among the first South African lenders to file annual financial reports under the new framework, doing so in September 2025. The Prudential Authority identified errors in those returns in January 2026, and African Bank subsequently resubmitted corrected filings with the help of an external audit firm, an episode reported to have unsettled the regulator’s confidence in the credibility of the bank’s data.
Taken together, the CEO and CFO departures point to sustained strain in African Bank’s senior leadership at exactly the moment the bank needs to demonstrate the reporting discipline regulators expect under the stricter Basel 3.1 regime. Promoting Mabena from within, rather than bringing in an external appointee, suggests the board is prioritising continuity and institutional knowledge over a clean break while the search for permanent leadership continues. How quickly African Bank can settle both the CEO and CFO roles on a permanent footing is likely to weigh on how the Prudential Authority, noteholders and credit rating agencies assess the bank’s governance in the months ahead.