Silicon Valley Bank - Overview On Friday last week, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was closed by US regulators after a run on the bank’s deposits occurred. In terms of assets, SVB’s collapse was the second biggest bank failure in US history. By the end of 2022, the bank had around $209bn in [...]
2023 Budget Speech Update The 2023 Budget speech was delivered against the backdrop of high living costs, a dismal unemployment rate and intensive loadshedding crippling businesses, all of which are placing severe strain on South Africa’s economic recovery and growth. Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana provided some relief by proposing no significant tax [...]
Investment Outlook Q4 2022 The Fourth Wave Remains The past few years have created more investment angst than usual, and it has been difficult at times to make sense of return prospects across asset classes. The collision between investments, economics, politics, and social issues has undermined the ability to gain comfort in [...]
Moonwalk Away In financial services we focus on investment outcomes, on providing sound investment advice, explanations on what is driving investment markets, and how to deal with some of our less virtuous behavioural biases so that we can get out of our own way when it comes to decision making. But what [...]
Average Clause Explanation When you insure your asset like a building, you advise your Insurer of the value which then forms the sum insured under your policy. The insurer charges you an insurance premium based on this declared sum insured. If you get this insurance value wrong and it is lower than [...]
How is the 'US Inflation Drop' Good News for South Africa? US inflation drop in July from 9.1% to 8.5% really is a big deal. Washington DC is 13 000km from Johannesburg. Yet what happens today in the US capital has a direct influence on what will happen to SA's commercial hearbeat [...]
Insurance: Protecting Against a Power Surge Loadshedding has become a part of the daily lives of South Africans all over the country. In 2022, we had 960 hours of national loadshedding and recently reached stage 6, further increasing outages. With increased loadshedding comes a bigger chance of electrical faults that lead to [...]
Why am I not allowed to withdraw money from my RA? I am in a bit of a financial crunch at the moment and wanted to withdraw money from my retirement annuity (RA) at Allan Gray. It informed me that I would only be able to withdraw the money if the total [...]
Increase in Vehicle Theft Using Relay Attacks In recent months, the Insurance Crime Bureau has seen an increase in thefts of newer model Sports Utility Vehicles (SUV), that have keyless entry and ignition technology. This Modus Operandi sees criminal syndicates using “Relay Attacks” as method to steal these vehicles. In essence, the [...]
The Great Rotation? In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, and the easy monetary policy and stimulus which followed, it has been a relentless surge upwards in investment markets, momentarily paused only by the COVID pandemic in 2020. As at the end of 2021, the average 10-year return for an investor [...]
