Paul van der Merwe

Head of Enterprise Architecture at Standard Bank Group

Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa

About

Paul is a dynamic and insightful enterprise architect. A conceptual thinker, he has driven a number of advances in the fields in which he specialises, among them data management, software development, risk management, IT governance and enterprise architecture (EA). Under Paul’s direction, Real IRM has taken EA consulting and education into global markets, and as a consequence South Africa is a world leader in this domain. Real IRM’s EA approach, developed and implemented under Paul’s guidance, is now included in TOGAF as a best practice. He also led the development of the enterprise-wide transformation roadmap for Nedbank that was awarded the iCMG’s 2015 Global Enterprise & IT Architecture Excellence award for Transformation and Planning. Paul is passionate about EA and is promoting it as a discipline and profession on an ongoing basis. He was the Chair of the Architecture Forum of The Open Group in 2009, the body that develops and owns TOGAF. He was one of the contributing authors of TOGAF 9 and is on an ongoing basis promoting and encouraging collaborative participation in the development and adoption of EA as a business discipline. He is frequently invited to present at international and local industry conferences. He presented as a plenary speaker at a number of The Open Group’s Enterprise Architecture Practitioners’ Conferences, as well as at Gartner, Forrester, iCMG and IRM UK global EA events. For the last four years he is leading the EA practice for Standard Bank Group. In October 2022 SBG won the Forrester’s Enterprise Architecture (EA) Award for EMEA, and in November 2023 SBG was the winner of the BIAN Transformation Champion Award.

Experience

  • Head of Enterprise Architecture at Standard Bank Group
    Oct 2019 - Present · 6 yrs 9 mos

  • FirstRand group (3 yrs 4 mos)
    • Enterprise Architect
      Oct 2018 - Sep 2019 · 1 yr

    • Head of WesBank Group Enterprise Architecture, IT Governance and IT Strategy
      Aug 2017 - Sep 2018 · 1 yr 2 mos

    • Head of DirectAxis Enterprise Architecture
      Jun 2017 - Sep 2018 · 1 yr 4 mos

  • Enterprise Architect at Nedbank
    Aug 2012 - Jun 2016 · 3 yrs 11 mos

  • Business Unit Manager: Innovation and Development at Business Connexion
    Apr 2011 - Jul 2012 · 1 yr 4 mos

    BU Manager in Business Consulting responsible for developing new consulting products and services.

  • Secretary: AOGEA South Africa at Association of Open Group Enterprise Architects - South Africa
    Jul 2010 - Jul 2011 · 1 yr 1 mo