Shehnaaz Suleman

Experience

Shehnaaz Suleman is a CA(SA) and IFRS technical partner at BDO South Africa, specialising in financial services. She has extensive experience advising major banks, insurers and asset managers on complex IFRS matters, backed by previous roles at KPMG, EY and Discovery. Since joining BDO in 2019, she has built and leads a technical team dedicated to financial services, which has grown significantly under her leadership and now supports clients locally and globally.

Shehnaaz actively contributes to key SAICA and BDO Global committees, strengthening BDO’s visibility across the financial services industry. She develops and delivers IFRS training across South Africa, the African region and internationally, and has led major initiatives including IFRS 17 and IBOR training programmes. Her work has supported BDO in securing significant mandates, including the external audit of Allan Gray and advisory projects with leading banks such as Nedbank.

She also collaborates with BDO’s FS Technology team on innovative tools like iAFS, and contributes regularly to industry thought leadership. Her client portfolio includes many of the largest financial institutions across banking, insurance and asset management.

Shehnaaz has championed several major initiatives, including:

• IFRS 17 webinar series for BDO South Africa (with BDO Canada)
• BDO Global webinar on IBOR reform
• Annual IFRS Updates for major banks

These initiatives resulted in new opportunities across regulatory, valuations and internal audit engagements, and strengthened BDO’s market positioning. She played a key role in BDO South Africa winning the external audit of Allan Gray, as well as securing advisory projects with major banks including Nedbank. She has led IFRS 17 implementation programmes and regularly contributes her lessons learned to BDO’s thought leadership through articles, podcasts and videos.

Industry & Professional Forums

Local (SAICA): Banking Projects Group; IFRS 17 Sub‑committee; IFRS 17 Banking Committee; IFRS 9 Model Matters; IBOR Reform; Accounting Matters

BDO Global: Asset Management COE; IFRS Financial Instruments Sub‑group; IFRS Insurance Sub‑group; IFRS 17 Working Group; Regulatory COE; Large Firm Financial Instruments meetings (with BDO’s Global Head of IFRS)

Selected Clients

Banks: Absa/Barclays, Nedbank, Investec, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Bank of China, Bank of India, HBZ Bank, BankABC, Atlas Mara, TymeBank, Mauritius Commercial Bank, Bayport Group, Grindrod Bank, Finbond Group, Ithala SOC

Asset & Wealth: Allan Gray, Coronation, Prescient Group, JSE Limited

Insurance & Other: Discovery Group, Telesure Group