“I sold Abflex, sold ‘tonight’s specials” at restaurants, sold water, sold policies, drafted wills, and lots more wills, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

Alex Simeonides is an experienced financial advisor who worked for both Discovery and Liberty Life, ranking as a top advisor for several years for each company. He has also successfully run one of the top three brokerages in South Africa.

In 2012, he identified the need for an insurance product that would indemnify the legal fees and costs at death, and Capital Legacy was born.

We posed a few questions to Simeonides.

What does your company do?

Capital Legacy has grown to become the largest provider of wills in the country. We pioneered insurance that guards your loved ones’ inheritance against the high legal fees and costs when you pass away with our Legacy Protection Plan. Since 2012, we have diversified our range of offerings to include life and critical illness cover, a Shariah-compliant will-drafting service, and a first-of-its-kind education and care cover for children, EduCare.

As a leader of a company that leverages IT, what do you see as the top priorities in 2022/2023?

The last few years the focus has been on building B2B tools to support and enable stakeholders. Next year will be all about consumer-facing products and tools, including an app.

What do you most admire in business and why?

The ability to reinvent.

How do you attract and retain talent?

We naturally attract people who are looking for that extraordinary challenge. We retain people who are up to that extraordinary challenge.

If you could go back and give your 18-year-old self one piece of advice, what would it be?

I would have learnt basic IT skills and information management much earlier in life.

What’s your favourite productivity hack?

Start with whatever is first on the pile.

What occupation (other than your own) would you like to try?

Corporate finance.

Where do you see the technology industry heading in the next three to five years?

Historically only large corporations had access to IT development to be able to custom build to their needs. In the last few years medium-sized firms have had access to this and I look forward to it being accessible to small businesses.