About

What AURA is for

Most South Africans on a medical scheme chose their plan once, years ago, and have not looked since. Not from carelessness — because looking properly means reading several hundred pages of benefit schedules written by people who are not trying to be understood.

AURA is an attempt to do that reading for you, and then talk to you about it like a person.

The problem, stated plainly

There are more than a hundred and fifty open medical scheme options in South Africa. They are priced differently, they cover different things, they use different words for the same thing, and the differences that matter most are usually the ones nobody puts on a brochure — the waiting period the scheme may impose, the band of spending where nothing is covered at all, the shortfall between what a specialist charges and what a scheme pays.

A good advisor closes that gap. The trouble is arithmetic: a good advisor has a few hundred clients and a finite number of evenings, so the people who get an hour of careful attention are the ones who already know to ask for it.

The ambition is straightforward: give someone the quality of attention a good advisor gives their best client, without them having to be anyone's best client.

What we are actually building

AURA asks about your household, what you are already on, and what you actually use. It reads the schemes' own documents — not brochures — and narrows a hundred and sixty-odd plans down to the handful that meet what you told it, showing its working as it goes. It then does the same for gap cover, which is a separate product and is priced and sold separately.

At the end you see which plans meet what you told it, why the others were left out, and what it would cost. If you want a human being to take it from there, one is available. If you do not, you have a straight answer and you owe us nothing.

What it will do

Read the schemes' registered rules and benefit schedules, and say where each figure came from
Narrow the field and show its reasoning
Tell you what it does not know
Explain the parts that cost people money quietly — waiting periods, the self-payment gap, the scheme rate
Hand you to a licensed advisor when the answer needs one

What it will not do

Rank plans as "best" — that word depends on facts about you it cannot verify
Guess a number and present it as read
Push you toward a product because it pays better
Pretend a scheme's discretion is a rule we can promise
Keep anything about you that you did not choose to give it

Why it is built the way it is

Everything AURA says about a scheme is traceable to a document we hold. Where we have read a scheme's registered rules, it says so. Where the figure came from an application form or a published underwriting summary instead, it says that too — those are weaker instruments and the difference belongs to you, not to us.

The rule we hold ourselves to

Where we do not know something, the page says we do not know it. A tool that fills a gap with a plausible number is more dangerous than one that leaves it blank, because you cannot tell which is which.

The same applies to the things a scheme decides rather than the law. A waiting period has a statutory ceiling; whether a particular scheme imposes it, and for how long, is the scheme's call on the day it reads your application. We will tell you the ceiling and what usually happens. We will not tell you what will happen to you, because we would be guessing with your family's cover.

Who is behind it

AURA is built by Agentic and is a product of Silverhurst Wealth Partners. Medical aid and gap cover advice is provided under Approach Administration (FSP 23579), where Eldon de Waal is a Supervised Representative. Investment and savings advice sits with Silverhurst Wealth Partners (FSP 53208), where he is the Key Individual.

That split is not decoration. Medical schemes are regulated by the Council for Medical Schemes and advice on them falls under a different licence to the one that covers investments. Two licences, named, so you can check either.

Where we are, honestly

AURA is new and still being built. Some of what it will eventually do is not built yet, and the pages say so where that is true. It is being tested by real people right now, and their notes are changing it weekly. If you find something wrong, we would rather hear it from you than not — tell us here.

What we want it to become

Medical aid is the first thing because it is the one where the gap between what people pay and what they understand is widest. It is not meant to be the last. The same approach — read the documents, show the working, say what you do not know, hand over to a human when it matters — applies to most of the financial decisions people make alone and badly.

We would rather be the tool people check things against than the one that tells them what to do.

See where you stand Start with the basics

AURA provides information and, where you ask for it, advice through a licensed representative. It is not a medical scheme, a broker of last resort, or a substitute for the scheme's own rules — which are the final word on what your cover does. Nothing on this page is a guarantee of cover, of a waiting period, or of a scheme's decision on your application.