BBusSc (Actuarial), PhDip (Actuarial), FFA, FASSA, CFP

Magda qualified as a Fellow of the Faculty of Actuaries (Edinburgh) in 1994. She has over 20 years’ experience in the South African asset management industry and has published widely in the field. She has also served as a board member of the Actuarial Society of South Africa.

She started her career as a product development and investments actuary at Southern Life in 1993, where she designed and managed index-tracking funds, and this was followed by two years at Alexander Forbes as an investment consultant. In 1997, she joined Coronation Fund Managers as a director and Head of Institutional Business. While at Coronation, she was responsible for a fivefold growth in the company’s institutional assets under management. Magda left Coronation in 2003 to start IQvest, a fund of hedge funds company. Later that year, after selling IQvest to the African Harvest group, she was appointed to the position of CEO of African Harvest. Under her stewardship, the assets under management of the company grew from R10 billion in 2003 to R35 billion in 2006. After negotiating the sale of African Harvest Fund Managers to Cadiz Financial Services in 2006, she led the management buy-out of the remainder of the African Harvest group, which resulted in the formation of Sygnia.

She grew Sygnia’s assets from R2 billion to R154 billion in nine years, leading Sygnia to become the second largest multi-management company in South Africa. Sygnia listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange on 14 October 2015 (the share offer was twenty times oversubscribed). Magda has headed Sygnia as its Chief Executive Officer since 2006.