Jessica Kutumela

Chief Risk Officer at Guardrisk Group

Speaker

Jessica Kutumela is Chief Risk Officer of Guardrisk Insurance Group, with more than two decades of risk management experience across the insurance and banking sectors, including over 10 years in executive leadership. In her current role, she leads the risk management function and serves as Head of the Risk Control Function across Guardrisk's South African, Namibia, Gibraltar and Mauritian entities.

Jessica is an experienced Board and executive adviser with expertise spanning financial and non-financial risk, enterprise risk management, financial crime risk, climate risk, operational resilience, third-party risk and insurance solvency. Throughout her career, she has led complex risk and regulatory transformation programmes and has played a key role in embedding risk governance and decision-making frameworks that enable organisations to balance risk, resilience and sustainable growth.

Prior to joining Guardrisk, Jessica held senior risk leadership roles within FirstRand and First National Bank, including Chief Risk Officer for FNB's Support Segment and Divisional Head of Risk for FirstRand Corporate Centre. Her earlier career includes roles at Absa Financial Services, Eskom and Ernst & Young.

Jessica also serves as a Board member of the Institute of Insurance South Africa and sits on its Audit, Risk and Investment Committee and the Social Ethics and Transformation Committee. She holds a Master of Management in Finance and Investment from the University of the Witwatersrand and has completed executive and sustainability programmes through Duke Corporate Education and the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership.