Women in business: Kari Tukur

Kari Tukur is the Vice President of products at Mastercard. A role she assumed shortly after getting off maternity leave in July. In this role, she is responsible for the in-market product strategy across multiple countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Prior to Mastercard, she was with Diamond bank, Nigeria, now Access bank, where she served as the Accountable Executive for delivering the bottom-line factor for the $1.5bn Consumer banking business. She was also responsible for the successful integration of the Retail bank, in the Access / Diamond bank merger.

She has over 14 years experience successfully managing Retail and Private banking activities across Africa and Europe at Standard chartered bank, Standard bank and Banco Santander.

She holds a First Class Bachelor’s degree in Business Information Systems from Sheffield Hallam University and an MBA from the University of Birmingham, UK. She is a wife and mother of two beautiful children Umar and Halima.

Her biggest challenge is in the complexities of balancing her role as a mum of kids under 4, a wife and an executive, and the trade-off battles she is constantly facing particularly as a young woman.

Being Vice President of products at Mastercard, she drives product and go-to market strategy for 31 markets in Africa, from Nigeria- second largest economy in Africa and the world’s fourth largest oil exporter to tiny Djbouti with only about 400K people and heavy on subsistence agriculture. “95% of payment interactions in these markets are still very much via cash, which costs the government up to an average 3% of the GBP. My job is to deploy market relevant products and solutions which connect consumers, financial institutions, merchants, governments and businesses locally and globally, enabling them to use electronic forms of payment which are convenient, secure and efficient instead of cash.” Kari says.

Read also: Women in Business: Debola Deji-Kurunmi

In achieving delivering the bottom-line factor for the $1.5bn Consumer banking business while at Diamond bank, Kari says every company’s primary objective is to deliver profits. In her words, “Within my first 90 days, I immediately identified opportunities for portfolio optimisation, which basically means, getting more (revenue) from what you have. The first paradigm shift was to get the business to be re-organised around the customer and not product.”

With 14 years experience successfully managing Retail and Private banking activities across Africa and Europe at Standard chartered bank, Standard bank and Banco Santander, Tukur says Multi-market experience helps broaden your perspective on the possibilities and what is obtainable in your area of specialisation which in her case is Retail Banking.

On the success integration of the Retail bank, in the Access / Diamond bank merger, Kari says her mandate was to integrate the retail business of Diamond bank and Access bank with minimal to no disruption to the client experience. To do this, she got the team to spend a lot of time on the desired client experience journey design earlier on in the project which was used to lead the technology and ops conversations. “Typically, this is done the other way round which is to build the destination model from the ops and tech perspective, then design the client journey based on the capabilities of the infrastructure available.” Tukur reveals.

On challenges of having fewer women on boards, Kari says, without a doubt, women have made tremendous inroads into the upper levels of corporate management, with upwards shifts in the percentage of women on boards from 16% for many years to something around 27% in S &P 500 according to ISS data.

According to her, a balanced board should be 50:50 on either side; however, she sees two primary challenges which are stifling the drastic growth of these numbers. “Patriarchy, and the fact that you’ll find that women work 46% more than their male contemporaries to be perceived as operating at par and finding the balance between career and navigating motherhood/family.”