Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 16 | Page 12

NEWS Holborn Assets opens new office in Johannesburg, South Africa olborn Assets has opened an office in Johannesburg and recruited an eight-strong team of specialist advisers as it continues a major global strategic expansion during 2018. H “Our expertise is in helping high net worth (HNW) individuals and corporates in structuring their assets and investments in the most financially efficient and productive ways,” said Reichert. The new office is led by Lourens Reichert, who will focus on providing specialist financial planning strategies and solutions to high net worth South African residents who hold assets overseas or who invest internationally. “There’s a growing need for expert financial advice in this area as greater numbers of South African residents are investing offshore or holding overseas assets, creating more demand for a wide range of financial planning solutions to maximise growth potential in a tax efficient way. “This sector is becoming an increasingly important part of HNW wealth planning in South Africa and my team is the most experienced one in this field in the country.” Reichert spent more than 10 years working in London, in asset- backed lending, before returning to South Africa to focus on private wealth, taxation and estate planning. There is a growing need for expert financial advice in South Africa Bob Parker, Holborn Assets CEO and founder, said: “South Africa is full of potential. There’s an enormous amount of capital held by residents outside of the country and Lourens and his team are experts in advising clients on how to manage that for maximum growth and efficiency. We’re delighted to welcome them to Holborn Assets.” ////////////////// CaseWare Africa launches modified cash template C aseWare Africa, a division of AdaptIT, has launched a template for the modified cash standard. It was developed by the Office of the Auditor General in National Treasury to mandate the principles by which national and provincial departments should present their financial accounts. “The key benefit of CaseWare’s templates is that they automate the onerous process of compiling financial statements in a prescribed format,” said Stephan van der Merwe, Product Manager at CaseWare Africa. “This new template will allow national and provincial departments to produce statements that comply with the guidelines issued by National Treasury with the minimum of extra work, and with increased accuracy.” The template can be set up to draw the necessary data from the state’s central accounting system, Basic Accounting System (BAS), as well as the management information system, Vulindlela. This information is used to populate Microsoft 12 INTELLIGENTCIO Word and Excel reports automatically from a single basic data source, eliminating the challenge of version control. If trial balances are updated during the process of creating the financial statements, it is easy to re-import the data into the Excel or Word reports. “The modified cash template is extremely rigorous in its demands and there is little room for interpretation,” added van der Merwe. “By reducing human intervention and maximising automation, the process can be made much more accurate while increasing speed. Departments can now provide National Treasury with reports in the required formats with minimal effort, while still supporting the drive towards more efficient, transparent management of taxpayers’ money.” www.intelligentcio.com