In the spotlight, this month is Natalie Baatjies who is the Senior Group FinTech Product and Strategy Manager at MTN, a Certified Digital Finance Practitioner and a Certified Business Coach. Natalie has over 20 years of experience in FinTech where she has held executive roles at pioneering FinTech start-ups like Oradian and Fundamo. She has led multinational teams who were responsible for deploying 14 mobile money solutions across 12 markets. During this time, Natalie witnessed first-hand the power digital financial services has to empower people and transform economies and has continually worked to see this realised.
Becoming a Credible DFS Expert
Whilst Natalie’s experience continued to grow as her career in FinTech progressed, she saw the need to consolidate her reputation as a credible and capable digital financial services (DFS) expert, who understood all aspects of DFS including the technology, regulation and use cases, by adding to her capabilities through training, which is how she came to enrol on her first Digital Frontiers Institute course in 2016. Once she had completed the Certificate in Digital Money (CIDM), she came to realise that – the more you learn – the more there is to know, and whilst she understood it would not be possible to master all aspects of DFS, it would be important to keep abreast of the industry and ensure that her skills remained relevant. She further explains, “I decided then to embark on the CDFP journey to ensure that I continued to have the right knowledge and skills to design DFS solutions that are affordable, accessible and solve real-world problems for low-income consumers in Africa.” She added, “My second goal was to learn how to build sustainable business models that prove the business case for inclusive digital financial services”.
Since becoming a CDFP graduate Natalie has been able to consistently work on both. She was fast to apply her new knowledge and used these acquired skills to build strategies and solutions across a vast range of business cases where she had little to no previous experience including Agri-Tech, E-commerce, Remittances and Microfinance solutions. All these solutions were focused on increasing access to affordable financial solutions for underserved populations. She worked with organisations such FinMark Trust on important projects such as building the Interoperable Regional Switch for remittances in SADC, advised on the design of a mobile money-based e-commerce solution for small-holder farmers for the IFC, and the digital strategy for SME’s at a Pan-African bank.
Natalie goes on to state that “Digital Frontiers Institute courses also gave me the confidence to participate meaningfully in conversations on emerging trends. Thanks to the knowledge I gained at Digital Frontiers Institute, I chaired banking conferences on AI and Open Banking and could facilitate constructive conversation and interesting debates. The Bitcoin course equipped me with the right level of knowledge to identify crypto solutions that expose the vulnerable to volatility or proposals that promote blockchain technology where a decentralized ledger was not appropriate or required”.
A valued member of the DFS community
Natalie is not only a CDFP graduate, but also a Community of Practice (COP) facilitator at Digital Frontiers Institute, a position she stepped into in June of this year. As part of her role as a COP facilitator Natalie aids in fostering authentic engagement and collaboration amongst other Digital Frontiers Institute students and alumni in South Africa. We are honoured to have her working with our community, having been a part of COPs during her time studying with Digital Frontiers Institute she understands the crucial role they have to play in elevating a student’s journey. To share her experiences and help them work on solutions, overcome challenges and learn from each other in the process. “What I enjoy most is that DFI is the infectious mission to drive financial inclusion. Students are encouraged to apply learnings to their own markets and collaborate with peers to drive innovation and reform” states Natalie.
As for the future, Natalie is still on her quest that started when she transitioned from Fundamo to Visa in 2013, – to have the honour of leading another dynamic team, who designs inclusive technology that transforms the lives of vulnerable people, particularly in Africa. But the possibilities are endless and she doesn’t rule out the fact that she may one day translate the skills she acquired at Digital Frontiers Institute to the health or education sector and perhaps start a digital innovation that will help to improve the lives of people with non-speaking autism like her son, “Do what you love with excellence and conviction and trust that blessings will follow in time”.
(Article originally shared on Digital Frontiers Institute on 26 July 2022)