University of Pretoria (UP) graduate and financial crime assurance manager at Absa Bank Lebogang Thobakgale has made the 2024 Mail & Guardian’s (M&G) 200 Young South Africans list in the Business category.

“Founding out that I had made the list was – and still is – a riveting moment; I keep pinching myself,” says Thobakgale, who obtained a BCom in Internal Auditing from UP in 2010 and an honours degree in the same subject in 2012. “Because I am involved in various activities, such as serving on the Association for Black Securities and Investment Professionals, I had come to know about the nomination. I knew the nomination was in the financial industry category, but had absolutely no idea what the selection criteria would be. I continued doing what I love and did my best with the hope that there would be some form of recognition in the industry one way or another, as I’m passionate about making and seeing change.”

Thobakgale works in the Financial Crime Compliance division and seeks to curb financial crime such as money laundering, bribery and corruption.

“My passion for anti-financial crime landed me this job, in which I conduct assurance reviews and assess whether financial crime controls are adequate and effective; I ultimately curb the financial crime risks at hand,” she explains. “Given my background in internal auditing, monitoring is my forte.”

Thobakgale says hard work and resilience landed her a spot on the M&G list.

“As I navigated my financial crime compliance journey, I realised how the man in the street can be adversely affected by it,” she says. “As such, I am intentional about sharing my skills in the financial crime compliance industry, and am proud of what I have achieved thus far. I provided insights on greylisting [which puts a country under stricter economic monitoring and regulation] on Tshwane FM, focusing on awareness. I also wrote two pieces on greylisting for last year’s Budget speech, and have engaged with the Minister of Finance and the National Treasury team on improving technical compliance to assist with getting South Africa off the greylist.”

Risk management and financial crime are also areas of interest for the 34-year-old.

“When I decided to go the internal auditing route instead of external auditing – which would have primarily been through studying accounting sciences – I knew I wanted to work more with controls, risks and processes as opposed to only numbers.”

This strategy has opened a number of doors for her.

“Studying internal auditing forces you to think outside the box. Essentially, every single process has risks that require controls; this is not limited to numbers only. The exciting part about numbers in internal auditing is the analytics, which can be applied even in my current role in analysing transactional data for any potential financial crimes during reviews.”

Although her job can be dangerous and challenging at times, she says she likes the mystery of financial crime compliance and enjoys finding solutions for things most people would view as being too complex.

“I could never dislike financial crime compliance,” Thobakgale says. “Everyone who knows me, knows I am a sucker for it. I would just like to see more innovation around pre-emptive and risk-based work. I cannot wait to see what the future holds for this particular line of work.”