Can South Africa Make the Great Shift? Why financial planning needs to go holistic.

This edition of Collective Insights developed like a meme —how it started vs how it ended. The initial premise was to collect commentary from the financial planning industry on the new global financial planning standards introduced earlier in the year. This question, however, gave our contributors a chance to highlight the bigger problems that are plaguing the industry in South Africa. Clear themes emerged from the writings that showcased the issues still to be addressed in South Africa to ensure that financial planning and advice can be offered to the greater South African public holistically, equitably and inclusively. This edition will focus on the problems identified by our contributors, highlight some of the issues that cause these problems, and offer possible solutions and industry trends that may assist in alleviating these issues in future. We are indebted to people such as Lelané Bezuidenhout, Anne Cabot-Alletzhauser, Tal Edgars, Gavin Smith, Lizl Budhram, Viwe Mngxaso, Gareth Collier, Jackie Palframan, Caretha Laubscher, David Crosoer and Kobus Kleyn (aided by ChatGPT) for their thoughtful contributions to this d i s c u s s io n . But this is just the start of the discussion. It serves to focus our attention. What needs to follow is the hard work of determining:

1. What needs to change in our training of financial professionals to better equip them for South African realities;
2. How we shift the focus of the industry from saving for retirement to addressing the financial trade-off decisions that individuals and families need to make every day of their lives;
3. How we model the consequences of trade-off decisions so that South Africans can make better choices to address those family needs;
4. How we create a business model that will make all of this financially viable but not affect the quality of advice; and
5. How we provide an ongoing advisory process to a population where financial literacy may still be wanting and where access to digital support may still mirror the level of inequality that appears in other parts of South African society.