About LeRoy Barnes

Product-led.
Delivery-proven.
Pan-African.

A Product Lead and Digital Business professional with a demonstrated history driving delivery of large-scale, state-of-the-art solutions across banking, payments, and insurance — in some of Africa's most complex environments.

Background

Agile leadership.
Concrete action plans.

LeRoy Barnes models an Agile leadership style with a keen ability to translate strategy into concrete action plans — effectively. His background spans product management, digital transformation, and executive leadership at institutions that include Absa Group, Barclays Africa, and APA Insurance.

He has P&L accountability experience, cross-functional team leadership (up to 20 direct and indirect reports), and a track record of launching digital products that achieve market share, revenue growth, and measurable user satisfaction improvements.

Today, through LBDC, he works directly with founders and executive teams across Africa — delivering the same quality of thinking and execution that large institutions pay for internally.

20+ Years in digital
product & banking
10 African markets
served directly
13× Delivery cadence
improvement achieved
Product Management Digital Transformation Online Banking Digital Payments Fintech OKRs Agile Pan-African
Experience

Where the work
was done

Oct 2021 – Present
LBDC

Independent Contractor — Digital Product & Transformation

  • Pan-African digital payments platform across 10 countries
  • Improved user satisfaction by 50%
  • Accelerated deployment cycles from quarterly to weekly (13× improvement)
  • Delivered DevOps, cloud, and platform business model masterclasses
Aug 2020 – Jul 2021
APA Insurance Limited, Nairobi

Head of Digital

  • Led Digital Factory of ~20 (product, design, dev, testing, DevOps)
  • Delivered Super App for motor, health, and life insurance
  • Launched USSD life insurance product for mass-market micro-insurance
  • Integrated payment gateway (card + mobile money rails)
Jan 2017 – Oct 2019
Absa Group

Head: Product — International Banking

  • P&L accountability of R320 million across 5 product lines
  • Revenue grew 13% in 2018 — first double-digit growth in 5 years
  • Launched NovoFX mobile app; brought Western Union® to the Absa app (first in SA)
  • Payment volume growth 30%, revenue growth 24%
  • Managed Mastercard and Western Union® partnerships
Feb 2013 – Dec 2016
Barclays Africa Group Limited

Digital Product Owner

  • Product ownership across digital banking and payments products
  • Cross-functional delivery in a large-scale regulated environment
Education

Academic credentials

2022 – 2024
Master of Management, Digital Business
Wits Business School
2020
Postgraduate Diploma, Digital Business
Wits Business School
2019 – 2020
Certificate, Product Management
University of Cape Town
1998 – 2002
BCom, Accounting & Information Systems
University of the Witwatersrand
Work together

Ready to work
with LeRoy?

Get in touch to discuss your product or transformation challenge. LeRoy responds within one to two business days.

Start a conversation →