Smart Money – Cogence’s Jonel Matthee-Ferreira and Kerri-Ann Sattary

In this Smart Money with Alishia Seckam interview, Jonel Matthee-Ferreira and Kerri-Ann Sattary discuss Cogence’s success as South Africa’s first truly global discretionary fund manager.

Matthee-Ferreira is the CEO of Cogence and joined the company in January 2024.

She has over 20 years of senior management experience in asset management and over a decade of experience leading multi-managers.

Before joining Cogence, Matthee-Ferreira worked at Sanlam Multi-Management and Absa Multi-Management.

At Absa, she grew the multi-management business from R5 billion in assets under management to R60 billion.

Matthee-Ferreira has an MBA from the Vlerick Leuven Ghent Management School in Belgium and a B.Comm Honours in Business Management and B.Comm Maths from the University of Stellenbosch.

Sattary is an Executive and Portfolio Specialist at Cogence and joined the company in January 2024.

Before working at Cogence, she worked at Ninety One – first as a Risk and Performance Attribution Analyst and then as a Portfolio Specialist based in London, where she covered global and UK equities.

Sattary has a BCom Honours Degree (Cum Laude) in Corporate Finance, Investments, Financial Modelling, and Risk Management.

She is also qualifying for the CFA Institute, and is the author of Chat GPT: The Conversational Alchemist.

The interview

In this Smart Money interview, Matthee-Ferreira and Sattary discuss how Cogence leverages the expertise of Discovery, BlackRock, and RisCura to be a leading global discretionary fund manager.

Sattary expands on the various roles that BlackRock plays in ensuring that Cogence clients get the best possible global fund management services and how RisCura does the same on a local level.

Matthee-Ferreira then explains how Cogence and its partners implement cutting-edge technology to make the jobs of Cogence’s financial advisors and their clients easier.

Sattary discusses whether South African investors are leaning towards local or global investing opportunities before unpacking which portfolios have been particularly successful for Cogence and its end investors.

Matthee-Ferreira also discusses how Cogence adds value to its financial advisor partners by simplifying their jobs.

Sattary concludes the interview by naming the investment trends she is currently monitoring – both locally and globally.

Watch the full interview with Jonel Matthee-Ferreira and Kerri-Ann Sattary below.