I am grateful for the privilege to have had a solid upbringing, attend a good school, graduate from two quality universities, and to get thrown into the deep end of a large credible institution at a young age where I gained invaluable learnings. I also had some extraordinary mentors along the way.

Today, I am motivated and amped to dial-up the mobilization of all this privilege to help ordinary South Africans become financially free, and to further contribute towards the evolution of our local financial services industry.

We must be better, and our start-up discretionary investment manager and wealth management firm, Your Capital, provides our team with an unconstrained opportunity to convert our privilege into tangible financial benefits for our fellow South Africans.

The value of financial advice is well documented, and the following are typically referenced as the key benefits experienced by clients:

qualitative – coaching, empathy, simplification, plans and action, achieving life goals, comfort

quantitative – extra returns of 2-4% per annum, or having two times more capital eventually

While working in corporate, I was far removed from the end client, partly because of my roles, but also due to multiple institutional layers. Most of the time, the end client, was merely a line entry on a spreadsheet or some back-office system. I once got a reality check while presenting at a retirement fund member report back session, when a member approached me afterwards and asked whether he should withdraw his pension benefits and rather invest the proceeds thereof in his brother’s start-up construction business? The spreadsheet line entry came to life and now needed some real financial advice…

Since founding Your Capital, where everything we do, every decision we take, is truly about the client, I’ve come to realise what the real value of modern, differentiated, and unconstrained financial advice can be:

financial bomb squad – just like the Boks, often when clients are behind or in trouble financially, we come onto the field afresh, and our skill and wisdom enable us to change tactic or pace in pursuit of a better financial outcome;

perspective – clients are often oblivious to the influencing or driving factors of financial outcomes, we simplify and articulate this to the core, and clients experience an aleph moment;

challenging the convention – conventional financial wisdom is often not in the best interest of clients today; the world has changed, and we help clients to modernize their financial thinking;

no nonsense – many clients have been led to believe that something regarding their investment or policy is ok, or this is just how it is, or you can’t do this or that; we don’t just accept, we challenge, we determine the facts, and we lay bare the truth;

back-up – who typically and unquestionably has your back; your parents, your sibling, your husband or wife? – similarly, our clients know, that we are here, they can talk to us, and we’ve got their backs.

Photo Source: SA Rugby Mag