You can make every bit count

An internet-based savings platform, in collaboration with life assurance giant Sanlam, now offers a way for people to benefit a child financially. Instead of giving physical gifts, a child’s grandparents or aunts and uncles can contribute money, via the ADDaBIT platform, to savings in a unit trust fund in the child’s name.

You can set up an ADDaBIT savings fund – for your child, for example – by selecting from a number of Sanlam Investments unit trust funds on the ADDaBIT website. There is no minimum investment amount, as there usually is on unit trust funds. The fund is subject to asset management charges.

The platform allows friends and family to contribute towards the fund from their own bank accounts as and when they feel like it, hence the name ADDaBIT.

Carl Roothman, the chief executive of retail at Sanlam Investments, says: “By teaming up with ADDaBIT, we’ve made it possible to save any amount, from as little as R1, to help people achieve their own goals and contribute to those of others.”

ADDaBIT is the brainchild of entrepreneur Michael Griffin, who was inspired when hearing Apple co-founder Steve Jobs talk about how he looked at yet another pile of unused, neglected toys and thought about what the money wasted on the purchase of these well-meaning gifts could have done for his children in the future.