Working Paper · September 2026
Read · Listen · Model · Ask
Financial planning
for the greater good.
An epistemic approach to South Africa's R50.4 trillion protection gap, and the advisory capacity required to reduce it
Prof Prince Sarpong, PhD · University of the Free State · Centre for Financial Psychology and Systems · Epistemica Institut
// Take it with you
Everything on this page, downloadable. Or read, hear and run it below.
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// About this audio
This is an AI-generated discussion of the paper, not a recorded interview. It is a way in, not the record. The slides carry the paper's own figures as the hosts reach them — and where the two disagree, the slide and the panel beside it show what the paper actually says.
Closing the fifty trillion rand protection gap
23 min · two hosts · generated from the paper
// Run it yourself
These are the paper's own parameters and formulas from Part IV and Appendix A. Move any input and every figure recomputes. The paper's base case is marked; its own conservative case is one click away. Each result shows the arithmetic behind it.
// The chain, left to right
// What this model is
A deployment arithmetic, not a forecast. It asks one question: if a diagnostic were run at population scale, what would fall out of it — in cover placed, in remuneration to the advisers who place it, and in value to the insurers who carry it. Every relationship above is stated in the paper. Nothing is inferred to make the numbers work.
// What it deliberately does not do
It does not model lapse behaviour beyond the year-five persistency rate, price competition, underwriting decline, or the cost of acquiring the scan volume itself. The paper is explicit that these are outside its scope, so they are outside this too rather than filled in with plausible-looking guesses.
// The one number that carries the argument
Conversion. Everything downstream is linear in it, so halving it halves the whole model. That is why the paper's own conservative case exists, and why the button for it sits beside the base case rather than in a footnote. Move that slider first.
// Against the gap it is meant to close
At the settings above, the cover placed is 1.94% of the R50.4 trillion gap. The paper does not claim the instrument closes the gap. It claims a measurable dent is available from screening alone, and that no comparable dent is available from teaching.
Every answer here is drawn from the paper and cites the passage it rests on. Where the paper does not settle a question, it says so rather than filling the gap.
// The paper's own exit
The argument of this paper is that general knowledge is the wrong kind — what changes a decision is knowing your own position. You have just read the general case. The instrument it describes returns the particular one.
See your own number in SikaSync →// Questions about the paper
Write to the author at prince@sarpongstrategia.com, or to Epistemica at info@epistemica.co.za.