A consulting practice,
run room by room.
Six engagement shapes run in parallel on a retained mandate. The mandate is narrow on purpose. We accept the work that fits the practice, decline what does not, and walk the rooms in the same order every time.
What we accept,
and what we do not.
We accept mandates for principals, family offices, and emerging investment platforms who want a written programme. Structure, treasury, systems, models, and independent review, run as one programme rather than five disconnected invoices. The typical mandate spans fund formation, treasury policy, and the operating layer that makes the rest usable.
We run no more than twelve retained mandates at a time and open two to three new mandates in a typical year.
We do not sell product, place insurance, or earn trailer fees. We do not act as a licensed Financial Services Provider; regulated advice is rendered under the licence of an authorised third-party FSP. We do not execute transactions on a discretionary basis, and we do not hold client assets. We do not run a research feed for retail readers. The Brief is editorial for principals and family offices. We do not publish client names, AUM figures, or case studies. Mandates stay confidential. We do not accept mandates in a season when the household cannot tolerate the changes the work would require.
The first conversation runs by correspondence. You write with the season ahead and the work in view. We reply with the rooms that fit and the rooms that do not, and whether a retained mandate is the right vehicle. Meetings are by appointment and proceed under confidentiality. The cap above is deliberate: we say no more often than we say yes, and the work stays narrow on purpose.
How the house is regulated
The short version of how the house is set up, what licences we hold, and what we do not.
Legal entity. Vereles Wealth (Pty) Ltd is the legal entity behind Vereles.
FSP relationship. We do not hold an FSP licence. Where regulated advice is required, it is rendered under the licence of an authorised third-party FSP. We do not name that FSP publicly.
Regulatory perimeter. Our South African work is designed with the FSCA perimeter in view, with FICA discipline and exchange-control fluency informing the work where relevant. The house does not replace the regulated, legal, tax, or custody responsibilities of authorised specialists.
Principal designations. The only public principal designation is RE5 for the Quantitative and Technical Lead. We do not publish the person’s name here.
What we do not do. We do not execute transactions on a discretionary basis, and we do not hold client assets. We do not sell product, place insurance, or earn trailer fees.
Full disclaimers appear in the footer legal strip. The Brief carries an educational footnote on every insight.
Diagnose
Read the family book the way a private doctor reads a chart. We map what is held, how it is held, what the policy says, and where the gaps are before anyone proposes a trade.
A diagnostic is the first engagement on most mandates. We sit with the principal, the existing advisors, and the records, and we write the season in plain English. The output is a short, signed document that names the books, the buckets, the policy gaps, and the questions to answer before any rebalancing is approved. We do not sell what comes next from this room. The diagnostic reads on its own.
- Map of legal vehicles, account structures, custodians, and counterparties in one diagram.
- Side-by-side reading of the current investment policy statement against what the portfolio actually does.
- Written list of open questions for the principal, the counsel, and the auditor.
- A signed letter to the principal that names what we found, what we did not find, and what we recommend next, in plain English.
Design
Set the operating model before the policy is written. We work with the principal and the family to decide how the office will decide, what it will hold, and what it will not.
Design is the engagement where the family makes the calls that everything else hangs off. We do not draft a model and present it; we run a structured conversation across one to three working sessions, write down what was agreed, and produce a short reference document the family and the desk can both pick up a year later and still understand. The output is the operating chassis: decision rights, buckets, bands, reporting cadence, and the IC terms.
- Decision rights across the principal, the committee, and the desk, drawn out in writing.
- Strategic and discretionary buckets, with bands and trigger thresholds for each line.
- Operating cadence: reporting cycle, IC quorum, escalation paths.
- A reference document the principal and the desk both treat as the working version.
Structure
Put the chosen model into law. We work with counsel and tax to implement the vehicles, the trusts, the holdings companies, the mandates, and the agreements the design calls for.
Structure is the engagement where the operating chassis becomes enforceable paperwork. We do not draft deeds, but we drive the structural work: scope of mandates for outside counsel, the timetables for vehicles, the implementation plan across the custodians and the administrators, the fee schedule, and the documents the family signs. The deliverable is a clean structure with a clean paper trail.
- Defined scope of work for counsel, tax, and administration, with named responsible parties.
- Implementation timetable across vehicles, mandates, and account openings.
- Fee schedule and counterparty terms, consolidated in one schedule.
- A closing memo describing the structure as built, with the deviations from design recorded.
Build
Construct the systems and the operating layer that run the office day to day. Dashboards, reporting surfaces, data pipelines, model infrastructure, and the manual that ties it together.
Build is the engagement where the engineering and operations work happens. We design and ship the review surfaces, the data feeds, the model infrastructure, and the operating documentation. Where the work is better handled by an outside technology partner, we brief them and run the build with them on retainer. The output is a working operating layer that the desk and the family can read and the auditor can follow.
- Review surfaces for the family, the desk, and the committee, on one set of charts.
- Data feeds, reconciliation, and the daily operating runbook.
- Model infrastructure where quant or algorithmic execution is in scope.
- Operating documentation the new joiner can read and the auditor can trace.
Operate
Run the office on a retainer. We attend the IC, run the rebalancing, manage the counterparties, and write the quarterly letter. We do not run it alone; we run it with the family.
On a retained operating mandate, we sit inside the office on a defined cadence. We work the IC pack, the rebalancing, the cash and FX, the manager reviews, the counterparty limits, and the communications. The output is a running office with a written record, not a series of one-off decisions. This is the engagement most of our retained mandates sit under.
- Attendance at the IC and the family meetings on an agreed cadence.
- Rebalancing, cash and FX, manager and counterparty reviews, kept inside the policy.
- Quarterly letter to the principal, written from the desk.
- Annual review of the policy, the structure, and the operating layer.
Oversee
Independent review on behalf of the principal or the committee. We audit the existing office, the policy, the structure, the managers, or the model output, and we write a private report.
Oversee is the engagement for a principal, a committee, or a trustee that needs a second set of eyes without a long mandate. We read the records, interview the desk and the counterparties, and write a private report with findings and recommendations. The work is bounded, the timeline is fixed, and the report is delivered to the principal or the committee in person.
- Defined scope at the opening: policy, structure, managers, model output, or all of the above.
- Document review, counterparty interviews, and structured findings.
- A private report delivered to the principal or the committee.
- A follow-up conversation to walk the report through, in person where possible.
Diagnostic, brief,
IC pack, review.
The cadence is plain. Four artefacts over the life of a mandate, each one signed before the next begins.
The opening artefact is the diagnostic. We read the existing programme room by room: structure, treasury, systems, models, and the independent view on each. The diagnostic is a written document, not a slide, and it ends with the rooms that fit the practice and the rooms that do not.
The second artefact is the mandate brief. A short document setting out the workstreams, the deliverables, the timeline, and the fee. The brief is the contract for the engagement. It is written to be signed, not negotiated again.
The third artefact is the IC pack. The full investment-committee package that the principal, the CFO, and the committee can read on first pass: policy statements, charters, models, and the decisions that flow from each.
The fourth artefact is the review cadence. Quarterly written reviews, an annual reset, and the standing right to call a fresh diagnostic if the season changes. The cadence is the work that keeps the programme honest between mandates.
On the shape of the fee.
Mandates are sized by posture, not by hours or by AUM. What determines the figure is the work itself, not the assets in the room.
Mandates are sized by posture, not by hours or by AUM. A diagnostic reads the room; a programme build writes it; a retained operating mandate runs it. Each shape carries its own weight because each one calls for different rooms of the desk. The number that lands in the brief reflects which of those rooms is in use, and for how long.
Two engagements of the same posture are rarely the same number. What changes the figure is the work itself: the complexity of the mandate, the number of vehicles or counterparties at the table, whether counsel and tax need to drive alongside us, whether a regulator is in the room, and whether the work runs a quarter or three years.
Retainer and project both have their place. We quote retainer when the work is the running of the office, and project when the work is the design or build of one. When the cheaper-for-the-principal path is a project, we say so. The desk would rather lose the recurring line than carry a mandate that should have been a brief.
We do not accept a percentage of AUM. We do not accept a success fee on treasury or governance work, where the right answer is meant to be quiet. We do not discount to win a season; the cap on retained mandates is the cap, and the fee is set before the brief is signed.
Every retained engagement closes with a written handoff, signed off against the original brief, and a calendar for the season ahead.
A signed handoff, room by room.
Diagnose
Map of legal vehicles, account structures, custodians, and counterparties in one diagram.
Design
Decision rights across the principal, the committee, and the desk, drawn out in writing.
Structure
Defined scope of work for counsel, tax, and administration, with named responsible parties.
Build
Review surfaces for the family, the desk, and the committee, on one set of charts.
Operate
Attendance at the IC and the family meetings on an agreed cadence.
Oversee
Defined scope at the opening: policy, structure, managers, model output, or all of the above.
- A room-by-room reading of the estate or platform, written in plain English.
- A set of decisions, drafted and ready to be signed, with the authority behind each one named.
- A documentation set that survives personnel change: charters, policies, committee minutes, model notes.
- A standing cadence. Quarterly, half-yearly, or annual review. We stay close without being in the way.
See the cover page of a
working deliverable.
The sample surfaces are the public opening of engagement deliverables: the cover page, the table of contents, the first section, and a hairline frame where the remaining sections sit. Two are open on this site. Both are opened from the closing block below.
- 01
Treasury Policy
The governing document. How money is held, moved, hedged, and reported, in one signed file.
- 02
The IC Pack, in Twelve Pages
The committee deliverable. Twelve pages, every cycle. The format is the contract.
If the rooms above
describe your season,
We maintain a small number of retained mandates and open new mandates selectively. Write to the private office. We reply with care, and without obligation.