Evolutionary Awards 2025 – Fairheads Benefit Services: the greatest impact

Category: The Greatest Impact

Describe your evolution:

This submission relates to a recently introduced tracing innovation by Fairheads Benefit Services – the MAVAMBO APP. This app not only marks a significant ‘Evolutionary’ milestone in cracking the unclaimed benefits code in South Africa, but is in fact ‘Revolutionary’.

The Financial Sector Conduct Authority has estimated there are roughly R47.3 billion in unclaimed pension funds belonging to over 4.8 million “missing” beneficiaries. There are multiple causes for the unclaimed benefits challenge.

These include:

• Poor administration and outdated records: Employers or fund administrators often fail to update contact information or maintain accurate records when members change jobs.
• Low financial literacy and awareness gaps: Many low-income earners lack knowledge of their entitlements or the claiming process, often unaware they are beneficiaries of pension or provident funds.
• Migrant labour patterns and historical record issues: Past apartheid-era migrant employment, sometimes under false names or temporary permits, led to disjointed or lost records. This makes tracing beneficiaries, especially cross-border or posthumous ones, very difficult.
• Incentive misalignment and fee-driven inertia: Fund managers and administrators benefit from unclaimed funds via ongoing fees which can disincentivise proactive tracing and payout efforts.
• Fragmented systems: There is currently no central unclaimed assets fund or unified tracing system. Funds are scattered across thousands of occupational and umbrella funds with little consistency across tracing and payment systems.

How Fairheads will revolutionise tracing in Southern Africa

Innovation is in Fairheads’ DNA, and we are always trying to find new and better ways to help our members. The Mavambo app, proprietary to Fairheads, seeks to address the above challenges. It connects field agents (we call them Warriors) with members who have benefits due to them. The App initiative lives within Fairheads’ stand-alone tracing department which has proven highly successful over many years now.

The name ‘Mavambo’ comes from the Shona word for ‘Origins’ and provides a clue as to what separates it from other tracing solutions. Using Artificial Intelligence we use patterns in data to link missing members to an area or district where we have a network of Warriors who can trace them. Algorithms are developed over time based on a practical application of data science, machine learning, and public records intelligence. Much like Uber links riders with drivers, Mavambo links missing members with Warriors.

The Mavambo solution is designed to cater for those ‘hardcore’ cases which have already been through the traditional tracing processes. Our aim is not to replace those solutions which are effective where members have a ‘digital footprint’ and can be located from information held by the various information bureaus but rather to go the extra mile and indeed implement the ‘last-mile’ trace.

The Warriors are entrepreneurial individuals contracted to Fairheads who are incentivised to find people in their area and are able to earn a significant commission fee. In the process we are helping to create badly needed jobs in the country. Our aim is scale up to some 500 Warriors by the end of 2025, from a current 80.

Our Warrior onboarding process has been designed to attract individuals with a social services background, and we have been working with a number of NGOs to source suitable candidates. The onboarding process includes rigorous checks including police clearances, polygraphing and reference checking to make sure we only give access to reliable individuals. It’s also important to onboard people who already have a connection to the area that they work in, and are known by the community because of the many scams which besets the tracing industry. Ultimately Fairheads stands behind the quality of the Warriors’ work and so an additional trace validation layer has been added to the process.

Once on board, Warriors are put through a comprehensive initial and ongoing training process. The Mavambo app is loaded onto their smartphones and is secured via biometric access. The App allows them, once connected with the traced person, to upload all the details such as a photo of their ID, proof of existence etc with ease. Mavambo can also work well in areas with a low-connectivity mobile network.

Limitations of traditional tracing methods

Traditional and some of the more recently emerging tracing methods remain a part of the solution. However, as outlined above, the revenue model which is traditionally applicable is payment of the fee only upon successful traces. This imposes a fixed cost with variable revenue on the tracing agent, forcing them to cherry pick only the most likely cases to find. As a result, over the years tracing success rates have fallen across the industry as the ‘easier’ cases are found and the more ‘difficult’ cases are thrown back into the pile.

How does the Mavambo app work?

As an example of how Mavambo works, the name ‘Mthethwa’ stems from an area south of the lower Mfolozi river in the north-eastern part of KwaZulu-Natal. By understanding the origins of names it is possible to start the search for that individual where they are likely to have family networks. This is just one of many data points which can be used to construct these patterns, providing the location of highest probability of the missing person to which he or she has a connection.

Interestingly, the impetus for Mavambo was sparked by a conversation between our CEO, David Hurford, and our Financial Director, Zukiswa Mpalweni, who mentioned in a casual conversation that she recognised a name from her home village. Small things can lead to big ideas!

The aim is to build in further data, for example to use more data from employers or the industry number that would have applied to a group of men recruited to work on the mines. We are also mindful of the potential limitations to ensure compliance with the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), but we do know that the processing of information of deceased persons is permissible.

Mavambo is set to revolutionise the tracing industry. It is one more way in which Fairheads is making an impact on society, lifting the speed and accuracy of tracing people to another level – and getting money flowing to those who need it most.

Describe the impact your evolution has had in response to its identified challenges and targeted outcomes.

Identified challenge

The Fairheads Mavambo app was developed in response to the unclaimed benefits problem in Southern Africa. The challenge is both vast and growing, particularly concentrated in pension and provident funds tied to lower income and historically disadvantaged populations.

Misalignment of incentives, administrative weaknesses, and lack of centralised tracing continue to hinder payouts. Unlocking even a portion of these assets could offer meaningful financial relief for individuals and inject much-needed stimulus into the broader economy.

Targeted outcomes

While the Mavambo app is still in its early stages, it has already begun to make an impact in four key areas:

• Tracing success: We have been astounded at the success rate already generated in tracing beneficiaries with monies owed to them. We attribute this success to various factors, including the way in which we have used AI and other technology to powerful effect and the careful, targeted way in which we have gone about recruiting Warriors (‘foot-soldiers’). As mentioned above, it is important to onboard people who are known and trusted in their community or wider region and who ideally have a social services background.
• Job creation: The number of Warriors recruited to date stands at 80 and we are targeting 500 by the end of 2025. Given the dire unemployment levels in South Africa, this contribution to creating jobs will go far. The commission payable to Warriors is significant, further incentivising them to do their job effectively. Furthermore according to Statistics South Africa data, a single employed individual often supports themselves plus 2 to 6 others, including children, unemployed adults, and elderly relatives.
• Psycho-social well-being: One cannot over-estimate the psychological impact that is made on an individual who finds out from a reliable, trusted source that death benefit monies are owed to them, left sometimes many years ago by a loved one who was a member of a retirement fund. A lump sum can be transformative to those who may have struggled under the burden of poverty for years. The many letters of thanks that we receive from beneficiaries are testament to this.
• Skilful use of technology: AI is changing the world we live in. While it can be scary at times, when put to effective use, its power for positive outcomes is astounding. At Fairheads we have always been ahead of the curve in developing proprietary technology for our administration processes and the use now of AI and other technology for the Mavambo app shows that innovation is in Fairheads’ DNA.

 We are always trying to find new and better ways to help our members. The Mavambo app is one more way in ensuring that we fulfil our Value Statement: “We act respectfully, doing the right thing for the right reason to ensure our clients are safe with us”.

Supporting Documentation >