The Ikusasa Student Financial Aid Programme (ISFAP), in strategic collaboration with the ASISA Foundation’s LEAGO programme, has officially launched a flagship collaboration designed to help transform South Africa’s actuarial profession,broaden access to critical skills and help empower students through financial literacy.
Hosted at the SAICA offices in Bryanston, the initiative combines full tertiary bursary funding and holistic wrap-around support with digital financial education for talented undergraduate and postgraduate students from poor and missing-middle households.
The partnership advances ISFAP’s mission to enable academically deserving students from low-income and missing-middle backgrounds to access, succeed in, and transition from higher education into meaningful employment. It also aligns with ISFAP’s broader vision of a more inclusive, skills-rich economy where background is no barrier to professional opportunity.
The collaboration targets high-performing youth pursuing actuarial qualifications, addressing critical skills gaps while driving equity and inclusion across the profession.
Under the framework:
- The ASISA Foundation provides bursary funding for a cohort of 15 under-graduate and post-graduate actuarial students across 5 universities.
- ISFAP manages full bursary administration, tuition disbursements, monthly allowances, as well as comprehensive academic and psychosocial support to ensure that students are retained and ultimately graduate.
- The ASISA Foundation delivers its tailored L+EarnSecure The Bag digital programme to build long-term financial capability and money management skills among beneficiaries.
Key highlights of the programme framework include:
- Demographic Target: A minimum of 90% of beneficiaries from African, Coloured and Indian (AIC) backgrounds.
- Holistic Student Retention: Integrated wrap-around support aimed at achieving a minimum 90% annual student retention rate.
- Financial Empowerment: Mandated engagement with core financial literacy modules to ensure post‑graduation financial readiness and resilience.
Delivering the opening address, ISFAP Board member Dr Portia Maluleke emphasised the systemic impact of targeted educational funding:
“Too often in South Africa, young people with extraordinary ability do not lack potential. What they lack is access to opportunity. Programmes such as LEAGO seek to change that reality.”
Dr Maluleke added:
“The actuarial profession is one of South Africa’s most critical scarce-skills professions. It requires exceptional intellectual ability, resilience, discipline and determination. It is also a profession where transformation and broadening access remain important national priorities. The LEAGO partnership contributes meaningfully to addressing both objectives.”
The ASISA Foundation’s CEO, Ruth Benjamin-Swales said “True development goes beyond funding; it shapes mindsets. Through this programme, we want to equip students to lead ethically and become active citizens who help solve the challenges our country and the world face, now and in the future.”
ISFAP Chief Executive Officer Werner Abrahams reinforced the necessity of structured, end-to-end support for bursary recipients:
“When organisations come together around a common purpose, remarkable things become possible. Today’s launch marks the beginning of what we hope will be a long and impactful journey. This programme is about creating a model of partnership and support that demonstrates what can be achieved when educational opportunity, financial support and human potential intersect.”
By combining ISFAP’s comprehensive funding and student support model with the ASISA Foundation’s financial literacy expertise, the programme is designed not only to produce more actuaries, but to develop financially savvy professionals who are better equipped to navigate and contribute to South Africa’s economy over the long term.
The launch event brought together strategic stakeholders across higher education and the financial sector, including representatives from the South African Actuarial Development Programme (SAADP) and the Actuarial Society of South Africa, underscoring the sector-wide commitment to growing and diversifying the actuarial pipeline.
