Knowledge is power

Every day is an opportunity to learn
ELIZABETH JOSEPH
Mariselle Stofberg

Nolan Swarts, the general manager at Namfisa, has been in the professional environment for more than 10 years, and is still actively working to expand his knowledge and skillset.

Nolan Swarts was born on 6 October 1984 and is currently the general manager at the Namibia Financial Institutions Supervisory Authority (Namfisa).

Swarts completed his B Juris degree in 2005 and obtained his LLB degree in 2007 from the University of Namibia (Unam). Swarts has extensive knowledge in litigation (criminal, civil and labour law), legal drafting (contracts, legislation and legal opinions), commercial law, anti-money-laundering, advocacy, legal advice, administration and financial services and general legal matters.

He has been in the professional environment for more than 10 years and started his legal career in 2007 as a legal practitioner at Elmarie Thomson Inc.

From October 2009 until August 2013 Swarts was a managing partner at Swarts and Bock Legal Practitioners, a firm that he also founded. His published works include ‘Justice in Namibia: Imprisonment vs Compensation’, which he published in 2007.

In 2009 Swarts was admitted as a legal practitioner of the High Court of Namibia.

Swarts served on the Council of the Law Society of Namibia from 2011 until 2015 and ended his journey there as the president of for 2014/15. He also served as a member of council on the SADC Lawyers’ Association between 2013 and 2015.

Swarts became a part-time lecturer at Unam in 2013, where he taught legal process and constitutional and administrative law to paralegal students, as well as criminal procedure to final-year B Juris students until 2016.

Swarts started his career at Namfisa in September 2013. He started as an anti-money-laundering compliance officer, after which he became a legal advisor at Namfisa in September 2014. He served as the acting general manager from November 2017 until 8 April 2018, after which he was appointed as the general manager: legal services at Namfisa on 9 April 2019.

Throughout his career he has continuously strived to further his knowledge and experience and has obtained eight additional certificates between 2009 and 2015. These range from advanced training in trial advocacy, risk-based supervision, money-laundering control, financial inclusion, compliance management and legislative drafting. He obtained his certificates from Unam, Zimbabwe, Kenya and the University of Johannesburg.

He received a certificate for assessors training from the Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group in Zimbabwe in 2014.

Swarts has travelled quite a bit and has visited countries such as the Czech Republic, Botswana, Germany, Kenya, the Netherlands, Malawi, Tanzania, South Africa, Sweden, the United States of America, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Swarts enjoys watching documentaries, reading and playing golf in his free time. He is married and has twin daughters.

He sees himself as a good public speaker and leader, who can work independently without supervision. He believes he has the ability to generate ideas and is able to work in a team to achieve a synthesis of ideas.