A force to be reckoned with
whenever the office phone rang, Jeanette Marais wanted to answer it. That was how she realised a career as an actuarial scientist wasn’t for her.
“I’ll tell you exactly how it happened,” says Marais, deputy CEO of the R30bn life insurance and investment group Momentum Metropolitan Holdings, since March last year. “I worked in actuarial product development at Momentum in 1991. I very soon heard that the phone was ringing all day with advisers and clients asking technical questions about products and things, and trying to understand them. Whenever the phone rang, all the actuaries went ‘agh’… and I was saying: ‘Yes, give it to me, please. Can I speak to people?’ ”
It was at that point that the prospect of “going deeper into the spreadsheet” finally lost its appeal. Marais was halfway through a second degree in
