When Mokwati Ramphisa describes himself as “a boy from the north,” he isn’t reaching for nostalgia. He’s naming the reason his firm exists.

After cutting his teeth in Johannesburg’s northern suburbs, serving mostly older, affluent, highly structured clients, Mokwati returned to his home province of Limpopo with a simple question: Could the same discipline and access that underpin wealth in the suburbs be translated, respectfully and effectively, into rural and township communities?

Lebowa Wealth Management, the firm he founded and leads as CEO, is his answer. Born in Limpopo and trained in accounting and personal finance, Mokwati began his career at Old Mutual in Cresta. There he routinely met clients with trusts and wills in place, comprehensive risk cover, and clearly documented succession plans. “It used to fascinate me,” he recalls, “to have an 80-year-old walk in just to review a life policy.” The contrast with peers of the same age back home, where exposure to formal financial planning is limited, crystallised a purpose: Take the lessons from Johannesburg North and build an inclusive, context-aware practice in the North of South Africa.

Central to his thesis is a counterintuitive insight: the rural middle class often has more disposable income than their urban counterparts. Teachers, police officers, municipal workers and nurses in rural Limpopo may earn similar salaries to those in the city but face fewer fixed costs, no levies and rates, lower transport and housing pressures, and sometimes receive rural allowances. The barrier is less about income and more about access, trust and cultural fit. “It’s not that people don’t plan,” he says. “They do, just informally.” He points to the stokvel economy, conservatively estimated at over R50 billion annually, as proof that collective planning is embedded in community life. The task is to bridge that instinct with the benefits of the formal market: better risk pooling, compound returns, and documented, enforceable succession.

Trust, however, cannot be outsourced. Lebowa’s model is deliberately local. The firm recruits advisers from the very communities they serve and invests in their professional development. That includes pushing through the industry’s regulatory hurdles such as the RE5 exam, often a point at which informal agents fall away. “We’re building two capabilities at once,” Mokwati explains. “High-calibre technical advice and deep cultural fluency.” In practice, that means translating financial concepts into everyday language, meeting clients where they are (literally and figuratively), and respecting customary norms while clarifying how codified law applies. Succession planning offers a vivid example: in many families the last-born son may be expected to inherit homesteads and livestock, but intestate succession law distributes estates differently. Lebowa’s role is to preserve intention, through wills, beneficiary nominations and estate structures, so families aren’t blindsided by the legal process in their worst moments.