An Internet portal was launched at the weekend with the aim of bringing the informal saving market into the mainstream economy.
Simon White, CEO of Techno Spaza, the company behind the portal, says the size of the informal saving market - stokvels, burial societies, mogodisanos and saving blocks, among others - is estimated at R12 billion a year.
Despite this, the market, which has existed for more than 50 years, is facing numerous threats. Stokvels began because apartheid excluded blacks from the banking sector, but now they may bank freely.
In addition, stokvels face obstacles such as lack of information, access and opportunities, and membership is declining, since the younger generation perceives them as being for older people.
White says the new portal, www.stokvelonline.com, aims to address these obstacles.
"Take one market - IT. Why are stokvels not participating in that market? Why, when you talk empowerment, do stokvels not come to mind? They are very broad based. Why do they not maximise the opportunities available?
"Stokvels represent enormous capital and enormous potential. They just need to move to the next space."
Techno Spaza director Ghandi Badela says the company decided that technology was the best tool to foster change in an environment with the potential to grow, to allow for learning to be shared, to ensure the numbers in stokvels are used as an empowering tool and to make stokvels attractive to the younger generation.
The portal aims to allow stokvels to, among other things, market themselves to access new partners and opportunities, to gain an understanding of the global and local savings market, and access opportunities for empowerment deals.
Standard Bank and Metropolitan Life have partnered with Techno Spaza for this initiative.
Asked how all stokvels would have access to the portal, White said his company was planning to launch support centres in May to provide stokvels with access to technology, financial services and an educational programme, which will be supplemented with a stokvel newspaper issued free to stokvels.
The company does not burden the stokvels themselves with heavy costs, White adds. "The organisations we work with make contributions. It is almost obligatory for the large organisations to capture that market, and we facilitate that."
Badela adds that funding is also provided through sponsorship and there are plans to have advertising on the portal.
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