Viresh Maharaj

Executive: Retail

• Fellow of the Actuarial Society of South Africa (FASSA), Chartered Enterprise Risk Actuary (CERA), MBA (obtained with distinction) from the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business, BBusSc (Hons: Actuarial Science) from the University of Cape Town.

Appointed: 1 May 2021

Viresh has over 16 years of experience in the financial services sector with leading companies such as Metropolitan Life and Sanlam. He started his career at Metropolitan Life in 2005 as Product Development Specialist, before joining Sanlam Group Risk, as a Risk Product Actuary. He subsequently occupied senior and executive roles at Sanlam Corporate with a focus on new business growth while participating in and leading various client-oriented strategic initiatives, until his appointment at Alexander Forbes. Viresh has also been a director of Simeka Health, Sanlam Health Solutions and Graviton Wealth. He is a past vice president of the Association of South African Black Actuarial Professionals (ASABA), a former member of the Council of the Actuarial Society of South Africa (ASSA) and led the Sanlam Benchmark research and symposium process for the past 5 years.

Viresh is the Executive for Retail at Alexforbes, applying nearly two decades of client-centric leadership experience to drive Alexforbes’s transformation towards becoming a leading retail financial services firm. In his position, Viresh leads our individual consulting and wealth management capabilities, IFA partnerships and engagement, retail solutioning and investment propositions, digital transformation and group marketing. He is recognised as one of the leading voices in the employee benefits industry advocating for inclusive access to financial advice, empowerment of clients and technological innovation. His most recent role was as Executive for Strategy and Customer Experience at Alexforbes having led the refresh and implementation of the group vision, value proposition, strategy and brand. Viresh was the Managing Executive of Distribution at Sanlam Corporate prior to joining Alexforbes.