For investors
South African fiduciary administration runs on systems chosen fifteen years ago that are heavily customised, deeply embedded and not being replaced. That constraint is usually described as a problem. We think it is the opportunity.
The thesis
Time spent identifying who a piece of correspondence concerns happens outside the core system, so it appears in nobody's reporting. It is a genuine operating cost that no existing dashboard shows, which is why it has survived this long.
Core platform vendors sell the system of record. The waste sits in the manual workflow around it, in inboxes and spreadsheets. Fixing that is not a feature request to the platform vendor, and general automation firms do not know the domain well enough to find it.
FSCA Conduct Standard 2 of 2025 requires structured complaints handling and record keeping from Section 13B administrators. An audit trail produced as a by-product of the work is considerably cheaper than a separate compliance project.
The market
South African financial services is roughly a fifth of national GDP, and estate and trust administration is one of the least digitised corners of it. These are our own estimates from sector counts, not a purchased research figure, and we will show the working.
Everything, eventually
3,900+
Organisations in South Africa that administer fiduciary records
Banks, insurers, trust companies, wealth managers, law firms with estate practices, retirement fund administrators, public bodies
Who we actually sell to
995
Organisations directly involved in estate and fiduciary administration
The segment with high document volumes, manual compliance and real estate administration delay. This is the number that matters.
What we are aiming at
120
Enterprise customers over five years
Roughly a tenth of the serviceable market. Anything more than that inside five years would be a forecast rather than a plan.
The wedge
Selling an automation platform to a regulated financial services firm is a long, committee driven sale with a real chance of never closing.
Selling a free two week measurement of one process is not a sale at all. It needs no budget, no procurement process and no security integration, because it asks for read only access and changes nothing.
That turns an enterprise sales cycle into a low friction entry point, and it produces something more useful than a pitch: a measured number, from the client's own data, that either justifies the next phase or does not.
The land and expand shape
Entry
No budget required. Bypasses procurement entirely.
First revenue
Priced against the measured value, not a list price.
Recurring
Embedded in daily operations and in the compliance record.
Expansion
Same buyer, established trust, far shorter cycle.
Where we actually are
Any investor will establish this in the first twenty minutes of diligence, so there is no value in arranging the page to delay it.
Risks
Our answer. Phase 0 is specifically designed to bypass budget and procurement. It is the mitigation, not an afterthought. Whether it works is exactly what the next few months test.
Our answer. Deliberate. Depth is what produced the insight. The same pattern extends across claims, onboarding, estates and compliance, and beyond South Africa into comparable jurisdictions.
Our answer. The defensibility is in the process knowledge and the integration into legacy estates, not in the model. The model is a component we could change.
Our answer. Possible. Their incentive is the system of record, and the waste lives in the inbox around it. That gap has persisted for years, which is some evidence about how quickly it closes.
Our answer. Real and unresolved. The team is small and the domain knowledge is concentrated. Hiring and documenting the method is a near term priority.
Our answer. The hardest one. Free measurement is how we buy credibility with something other than claims, but it is unproven until the first engagement completes.
Conversations we want
We are raising R3 million in seed capital. It buys roughly 18 to 24 months, and it is not there to prove the idea. The platform exists. It is there to get it deployed inside paying institutions.
| Where it goes | Amount | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Product development | R900,000 | 30% |
| Sales and marketing | R750,000 | 25% |
| Customer implementations | R450,000 | 15% |
| Cloud infrastructure | R300,000 | 10% |
| Cybersecurity | R300,000 | 10% |
| Working capital | R300,000 | 10% |
| Total | R3,000,000 | 100% |
Revenue projections, the financial model and the full plan are in the deck rather than on a public page. Ask and we will send it.
Next step
Particularly the risks. We would rather hear the objection now than build for six months against an assumption that does not hold.