Peta Smuts is a director of Securitas Financial Group, a well-known and leading financial services provider. Smuts also heads up the company’s medical aid and health insurance division. Since her appointment as chief executive officer of Securitas Health Consultants (SHC) in 2014, the business has grown exponentially and services in excess of 20 000 clients.

The entire Securitas Group has been built around a few basic, yet fundamental, principles. The principle closest to Smuts’s heart is that of being an absolute expert in your field. She feels that the accepted norm of financial planners being all-rounders, providing advice in various disciplines, is a recipe for disaster and the leading contributor in the financial planning industry’s less-than-sterling reputation.

Smuts leads by example and continuously strives to be an expert among experts in the medical and health sector of the financial planning industry. Her contribution towards structuring relevant, yet cost-effective, solutions for business, organised labour, parastatals and corporates is well recognised in the industry, and she has received numerous accolades for her work.

Her rise: As a direct result of her ability to motivate and inspire, a work ethic second to none, being the expert among experts and her dogged determination, Smuts rose up the ranks to be appointed CEO of Bonitas Marketing, an associate company, in 2008. She achieved this at an age when most of her peers were still struggling to find their footing in the labour market.

Under her leadership, Bonitas introduced low-cost medical aid solutions into the market. Bonitas enjoyed demand-led growth to such a degree that the other roleplayers in the market had to take notice. It is a feather in Smuts’s cap that many of the low-cost medical aid options available on the market today still incorporate features born out of her initiatives.

By actively engaging with both employers and labour, often acting as catalyst, Smuts succeeded in expanding the Bonitas business and was instrumental in negotiating, designing and implementing healthcare solutions for well-known companies such as Murray & Roberts, JIC Ming Services, Xstrata, SA Postal Service and UNISA. It should come as no surprise that Smuts and her team were crowned the top performing brokers within Bonitas for four years running, not to mention the numerous industry related accolades they received.

Her excellence saw appointed acting CEO of Bonitas in 2013.

Never one to shy away from a challenge, Smuts grabbed the opportunity to move out of the boardroom and into the open market by becoming the chief executive of SHC in 2014. The mission was simple: build SHC into the leading brokerage in the medical aid and health insurance sector.

Although Smuts is proud of all of her achievements, she feels that her greatest accomplishment is that of using SHC as a platform to empower women.

A lot can be said about the limitations for women, created by the wrongs of the past as well as the patriarchal society we live in. Smuts, however, decided to spend her time on identifying the opportunities the situation presents. She said SHC was her blank canvas and the opportunities, the paint and brushes she required to create a masterpiece. Although not perfect or complete, it is taking shape. Women are employed in the majority, and at every level, at SHC. Her empowerment initiatives are reaping rewards and it is only a matter of time before SHC will be a matriarchal business.

Smuts’s record speaks for itself. She is widely regarded as one of the best and brightest minds within the financial services sector. Being nominated for the Women in Business award is a great privilege and will also provide a platform to network with other like-minded individuals in living out her greatest passion: transforming the financial services sector to the greater benefit of the women of our nation.