Stephan Venter with Nutun featured on Executive Spotlight

I look after growth for Nutun with a specific focus on Collections, Recoveries and Debt Purchase. I have been very fortunate to be part of the Nutun journey for 17 of its 25 years of existence. My team includes the debt purchase team in South Africa, the account management team for South African, US and UK recoveries clients, sales operations and support as well as marketing.

The team’s mandate is to form trusted partnerships with our clients, continuously exploring expanded solutions for them. At the moment our focus is to augment our people offering with technology, to enable our people to do their jobs better, be more efficient in their tasks and provide a better result at a lower cost to our clients. In the process, we are proud creators of jobs for the people in the countries we operate in.

I managed a credit card portfolio for one of the South African banks. We outsourced a large portion of our portfolio to one of the larger DCA’s in South Africa. They appointed a new CEO whom I knew from the industry and he approached me to become Business Development Director. That was 17 years ago.

Offshoring receivables work to South Africa leveraging people, technology and deep data analytics. We have seen how the combination of all these elements can result in a great customer experience, and improved recovery rates at a lower cost point, resulting in better net yields and improving profitability for credit and service providers.

That the role the receivables industry plays in the credit lifecycle and the health of the credit industry not be underestimated. I am also excited about the introduction of technology in the way people communicate with their customers. It is all about making it easy and offering an empathetic approach for customers to settle their debt obligations.

Our ambition. We have grown from 2,000 people two years ago to 8,000 people in 2023 servicing a global client base. Some of the biggest names in the US have put their trust in our business to help them do the stuff they don’t want to do. It was not that long ago that we only serviced customers in South Africa. Now, we are in the US, UK and Australia.

Loved the story of Phil Knight and how he built Nike with Tom Bowerman. Must be “Just Do It” then.

Sales is about information arbitrage. Make sure you know the most about everyone on both sides of the deal.

My kids. I learn from them every day.

The normal stuff—cowboy, policeman, fireman. Then I discovered mathematics and actuarial science became the focus. Not everyone’s cup of tea, including mine. Grateful for the exposure though—it teaches you great ways to think.

WFH – The calm, the trees, the coffee. It helps with thinking.
WFO – The people, the coffee. It helps with collaborating

-A South African Author called Deon Meyer does a whole range of thriller titles. Well worth the read when you need a break from the serious stuff.
-Any movie from Quentin Tarantino or Guy Richie, but True Romance remains one of my favorites.
-TV Show: Game of Thrones and Chef’s Table.
-Podcast: This American Life.
-Music: I have a penchant for Electronic Dance Music with a leaning towards Deep House.

My music taste. Also, I used to run very fast on the track over 400m hurdles and I played some proper rugby in my time.

We have three dogs—all rescues, all mongrels. We call the breed Africanus. Love them to bits.
Names – Maya, Sasha and Djali.