What is Fynbos?

Fynbos has built an investment platform for young South Africans based on tried and tested long-term strategies. We understand that investing seems complicated but the reality is, it's not.

Unless you are a professional investor your best strategy is almost certain to be a simple, low fee, high equity, passive investment strategy, not something complicated, cooked up to try and "beat the market".

In fact, you don't even need to understand what "low fee, high equity, passive strategy" means to get started. We've built that strategy into our platform so you don't have to figure it out.

We won't give you a "financial plan"

There is a lot more to financial planning than just long-term investing. You need to save for short-term goals, take out insurance to cover your risks, reduce your debt, and stick to a budget.

We don't help with all of that. We only cover long term investing (for now).

If you want a comprehensive financial plan, there are excellent financial planners and advisors that can help you to put one together.

But you don't need a plan to get started investing.

Fynbos is designed to be used without needing to first get a comprehensive plan, and for many young people you won't need a plan for many years. The combination of a high-yield emergency savings and a tax-free investment account will cover all of your long-term investment needs, starting today.

If you've already maxed out your tax-free allowance and you've still got funds available to invest, well done to you, maybe its worth hiring a planner, but stick to our guidance if you do.

Our strategy for young South Africans

The Fynbos strategy is focused on young South Africans with uncomplicated personal finances. Your long term investments have decades to grow so you have the most to gain by starting today and following a low fee, tax optimised, strategy.

We focus on maximising the value you can get from, South Africa's least appreciated investment vehicle, the Tax Free Savings Account (TFSA) and providing an emergency savings account to protect it from unexpected hiccups.

We remove the complexity of doing it yourself, by building a proven investment strategy directly into our platform. Simplicity, transparency, automation but still full control and visibility.

The strategy we use is based on low fees, tax optimisation, a long term focus, and using technology to remove costs. Every cent you spend on anything more complex is money wasted.

Why Fynbos?

The investment industry feeds off the complexity it creates. If someone is earning their living helping people navigate complicated concepts, don't expect them to advocate for simple solutions. Only the best financial advisors genuinely put your best interests ahead of their own.

Fear, uncertainty, and doubt will be used to market products to you that are over priced, over complicated, or simply inappropriate for young investors.

The worst advisors will charge recurring fees based on how much you invest but won't lift a finger after the day they've sold you some investment product.

Fynbos is different.

We don't charge any fees based on the amount you have invested (called assets under management, or AUM). Our entry level emergency savings and tax free products are best in class but free to use, and we make our money from our paid subscription not from platform or advice fees, or kickbacks from the funds we offer our users.

How does it work

We have built long term investment best practices into the Fynbos platform on the assumption that our users are investing for multiple decades.

We follow these core principles:

• Build a solid emergency savings fund to protect your long investments
• Maximise your tax free investments as early as possible to get the biggest tax savings
• Aggressively pursue the lowest fees you can find to avoid the compounding effect of fees
• Invest globally to get better long term returns and diversity
• Diversify but keep it simple by investing in passive index tracking funds

All you have to do is set up your savings targets for your emergency savings and select a fund to use for your tax-free investments.

When you make a contribution, we allocate your funds toward your emergency savings fund and tax-free investments as you've directed. These best-in-class accounts are backed by money market and ETF funds from South Africa's top fund managers, curated to align with our investment strategy.

You can also set up a recurring contribution into your Fynbos portfolio so this all happens automatically.

Stop procrastinating and start investing.