Superb addition to the Purple Group Executive team

Our friends at one of our founding clients Purple Group (which are the majority shareholders in, amongst others, EasyEquities, EasyProperties, EasyCrypto, Emperor Asset Management, RISE and GT247.com) have appointed Nicola Comninos as their Chief Risk Officer.

Our Carel Nolte – who is also on the Purple executive working with the brand, partnership and client engagement teams and who has assisted in a caretaking role with compliance – can often be found shouting proudly about his Purple team mates as they continue their mission of making investment and financial opportunities available for everyone. In a fun, safe manner that leads to financial dignity and prosperity.

Carel says: “Nicola is very well known in the financial services space and we are very excited to attract a person of this calibre to our team. I am beyond excited!”

Herewith more on Nicola and her new role:

Nicola has spent 15 years at the JSE. From mid-2019 she was appointed as JSE Group Chief Risk Officer where she led, amongst other iniatiatives, the JSE’s Covid-19 response plan and the Financial Sector participation in an Eskom country-wide simulation.

Nicola received the Risk Manager of the Year award in 2020 and in 2021 the Financial Services award from IRMSA, acknowledging the work she and her team has done in the risk management fraternity since 2019.

Prior to the JSE, she worked as an Investment Consultant to pension and provident funds at Acsis Limited and an Assistant Actuary responsible for life investment product development at mCubed Life, where she started her career as a Call Centre Agent.

In 2007 she joined the JSE in the role of assistant to the COO, working on projects like the in-sourcing of IT. Her ambition and growth is reflected in her journey since then, as she was instrumental in the establishment of an Equity Market Business Development team and progressed to be appointed as Business Development Analyst and subsequently moved up the ranks from Team Lead, to Manager and Senior Manager by 2013, a role later re-defined as the Head of Equities and Equity Derivatives. In that role she led ETF and ETN product development, was instrumental in setting up the JSE Colocation services business, led low-latency business origination and established the JSE market quality analytics capability.

In 2015 she moved into the Head of Group Strategy and Sustainability role, where she led the work to establish a JSE group Business Intelligence function, leading the Key Clients team, including the JSE Cape Town Office in Capital Markets. In 2017 she was seconded to head up the Transformation Office where she led a group cost saving initiative delivering R170 Mill cost savings with IT and Finance. From mid-2018 until 2020 she was appointed as Managing Director of Nautilus Group, a Hedge Fund Manco where she led the compliance remediation work and subsequently affected business wind-up.

She leaves the JSE to join Purple Group in a role that spans risk management, compliance and strategy as their Chief Risk Officer from 1 June 2022. In the next coming months she will plan and execute a seamless handover with her team and other teams across the JSE.

We wish Nicola the very best and know that the Purple team and their more than 1,5 million clients will benefit from her vast experience and desire to make the world a better place.