Through our collective NSFAS Solution Partner Savings Dashboard (supplied), covering 2024 to 2026, the platform’s controls have saved NSFAS a partner-reported R3.72 billion over the same period \u2014 more than six times what we as the four companies were paid to deliver those savings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The mathematics is straightforward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Without differentiated, grading-linked accommodation rates and occupancy verification, NSFAS would have paid accommodation providers at the full allowable cap on every claim: R15.52 billion across the period measured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What was actually paid out through the platform was R11.84 billion \u2014 a saving of R3.72 billion, or roughly 24%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those savings have grown each year as the platform’s controls have matured: R570 million in 2024, R1.22 billion in 2025, and R1.93 billion in 2026 to date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now you are likely asking, where do the savings come from? Two main sources, according to Profecia one of the four appointed solution partners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first part of the savings is simply from enforcing the rates a property’s accreditation grading actually qualifies for, rather than defaulting to the R5,200 monthly rental maximum per student.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second is catching duplicate, unsupported or inaccurate claims through occupancy verification \u2014 payments can now be linked to a specific accredited property, its grading, its location and the student actually occupying it, a link that frequently didn’t exist under the previously administered model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The actual reality is that the Solution Partners have saved NSFAS over R3.7 billion since 2024 through improved controls, differentiated accommodation amounts, verification and the prevention of incorrect or unsupported payments,” Profecia CEO Ebenezer Smith told News24 in response to questions about whether the fees earned by solution partners are exorbitant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Smith’s broader point is one worth sitting with: that the value-for-money question Parliament should be asking isn’t simply “how much were the solution partners paid?” but “what would NSFAS have spent, or lost, without the platform, its controls and the additional operational capacity the solution partners provide?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Framed that way, the R559 million paid to four companies running a national accreditation, grading, verification and payments infrastructure across roughly 367,000 beds looks considerably less remarkable than the R3.72 billion in prevented overspend and leakage sitting next to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It also helps to see what enforcement of graded rates actually looks like at the level of a single claim, rather than only at the level of a national total.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Under the previous, largely institution-administered system, a rental claim for a student in a single room could default to the full R5,200 monthly cap regardless of the property’s actual quality or condition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the platform, that same claim is checked against the property’s accreditation grading \u2014 many providers qualify for meaningfully less than the maximum \u2014 and against confirmation that the specific student is actually occupying that specific bed. Multiplied across hundreds of thousands of beds and multiple years, those individually modest corrections are what add up to a partner-reported R3.72 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n None of this is presented as an independently audited figure \u2014 the Savings Dashboard explicitly labels its numbers as partner-reported, not the product of an external audit, and any serious value-for-money review should test the methodology behind them, Profecia and the other partners are open to these audits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the scale of the gap between what was paid and what was saved is large enough that it deserves to be part of the conversation Parliament is having, rather than a detail that is mentioned as a passing byline, after the headline figure has already landed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If NSFAS’s own evidence bears this out, it raises a further, more constructive question than the one currently dominating the debate: not whether solution partners should be removed, but whether the demonstrated capacity behind these savings could be put to work on more of NSFAS’s operational challenges, given it has already shown it can save the entity substantially more than it costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s also worth noting the trend line rather than just the totals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Savings under the model have grown every year measured \u2014 from R570 million in 2024 to R1.22 billion in 2025 to R1.93 billion so far in 2026 \u2014 which the solution partners attribute to the platform’s controls maturing as more properties, students and institutions are being onboarded fully onto the system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If that trajectory holds, the gap between what solution partners are paid and what their model saves NSFAS is more likely to widen than close, which is precisely the kind of forward-looking evidence a value-for-money review ought to weigh alongside the historical payment total currently driving the political debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Note: all figures are partner-reported (NSFAS Solution Partner Savings Dashboard, 2024\u20132026; Profecia’s News24 correspondence) and are explicitly described as not independently.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Link to Profecia Website: https:\/\/www.profecia.co.za\/<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Profecia-IT-BT-Article-Image-1-1600x900-1-1024x576.jpg\")
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