Claire Coward was appointed as the new CFO of Peregrine Holdings on 1 June 2018.
Before joining Peregrine, Claire Coward was the group corporate finance executive and group reporting financial executive – technical at Massmart. Prior to that, she was an audit and technical director, and the sustainability reporting director at PKF, which subsequently merged with Grant Thornton. She is a qualified CA(SA) with a B.Com Honours (cum laude) degree.
- Also read: CFOs need to be ruthless and human, an interview with former Peregrine CFO (now CEO) Rob Katz
Claire loves her new role:
“It is very different to a low-cost mass retail environment, but is very exciting and challenging. I worked on the Peregrine audit as the technical partner when I was with PKF, which subsequently merged with Grant Thornton so know the team and the business well from my time with them back then. In a way, it felt like I was coming ‘home’ and my first month there has felt like I never left eight years ago.”
She says that she works with an “incredible and inspiring” CEO, Rob Katz, and with an extremely strong finance team.
“I am very excited to delve deeper into the nuances of the various businesses and cement my understanding of their products and to work closer with the MDs and FDs of the various business units, all of whom are experts in their field with years of experience in the industry.”
When we asked her about her vision for her new role, she said:
“At this point in time I am still settling in. The landscape for Peregrine has changed slightly with the sale of the securities business, however the Peregrine strategy is a lot clearer now and I look forward to assisting Rob in steering the business down that path of growing a high ROE, high cash generative, high dividend paying, high annuity income asset and wealth management business.”
