THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE SUCCESS
THE CO-FOUNDER
TARYNE SMITH
Co-Founder | Investments & Client Experience
CREDENTIALS
FAIS Representative — Investments (under supervision) | Five years in financial services | Twenty years in PR & Communications
A strategist’s mind, a founder’s care — and a quiet champion of women in finance.
Taryne co-founded Skybridge alongside Brendan and brings a strategist’s mind to everything she touches. With sixteen years running Triskye Corporate Communications — her own PR and communications consultancy — and the kind of analytical, detail-driven eye that is constantly asking how the experience could be quicker, clearer or simply better for the client, she designed the Skybridge client journey from the ground up — from the way the reception feels, to the way a review meeting runs, to the quiet thoughtfulness of a birthday card landing at the right moment in a client’s year.
For the past five years she has also been working in the financial sector itself, and is now a registered representative under supervision, specialising in the investment industry. She works closely with the most respected fund houses — building investment thinking that is methodical, considered, and unapologetically built for the long view. The same analytical instinct that built the Skybridge brand is what she now applies to clients’ portfolios: ask the right questions, look at it from every angle, and design something that works quietly for decades.
Taryne has a particular passion for women in this industry — and the women she advises. Financial services has, for generations, been a space where women have been spoken at rather than spoken to, and Taryne is part of changing that. Her quieter mission is to make sure the women in her care are educated, equipped with the skill and knowledge to take real control of their own finances, and calm enough about their future to lead the most important decisions of their lives — a sudden change in circumstances, the loss of a partner, the financial weight of caring for parents, the long horizon of a retirement that often falls heaviest on them — from a place of peace and direction, not pressure or fear. To Taryne, empowerment is not about being made to feel powerful. It is about having the knowledge, the direction and the calm to make every financial decision herself — and feel comfortable doing it.
THE WEALTH MANAGER
BReNDaN SMITH
WEALTH MANAGER | FOUNDER
CREDENTIALS
Twenty-seven years in wealth management | Registered Financial Planner (RFP®) | FSCA-authorised Financial Services Provider | Founder, Skybridge
Founder. The person clients call before anything important.
Brendan founded Skybridge Capital with the conviction that financial advice, at its best, is one of the most meaningful services one person can offer another. With twenty-seven years in the wealth management industry, he has the kind of market instinct that only comes from living through cycles — and the kind of client instinct that only comes from genuinely caring.
Clients describe Brendan as someone who listens first, explains clearly, and goes further than they ever expected — whether that is taking a late-night call from a client in a different time zone, driving out to a farm for a face-to-face conversation, or walking a young client through their very first investment. He has a sharp eye for markets, a deep technical toolkit, and a rare ability to translate complexity into calm.
What he is most proud of is not a credential, a number, or an award — it is the lifelong relationships he has built with clients across three generations.
THE WEALTH PLANNER
Ken de Kock
Wealth Planner & Compliance Lead
CREDENTIALS
Thirty-two years in financial services | Registered Financial Planner (RFP®) | FSCA-authorised | Specialisms: Gap Cover, Medical Aid & Life Assurance | Compliance Lead, Skybridge
The quiet, considered hand.
Ken is the quiet one in the room — exceptionally kind, considerate, and methodical to a fault. Clients describe him as the calm constant in their financial life, and they value him for exactly that: the same considered approach, every conversation, every year. In an industry that often confuses urgency with seriousness, Ken is the reminder that real care looks slow, steady and consistent.
He brings deep, lived experience across the protection categories most families quietly depend on — gap cover, medical aid, life assurance and investments — the cover that does its work for years before anyone notices, and matters most on the day no one wanted to think about. Across thirty-two years in the industry he has come to know exactly where the gaps in a family’s plan tend to hide, and exactly which structure closes them.
Ken also leads compliance for Skybridge. He is the person who ensures every portfolio, policy and recommendation the firm makes is watertight — regulatorily, structurally and ethically. In an industry where the small print can quietly cost families millions, Ken makes sure the small print is working for you.
THE WEALTH PLANNER
NICKY GREENER
Wealth Planner
CREDENTIALS
30+ years in financial services | Registered Financial Planner (RFP®) | FSCA-authorised | Specialisms: Medical Aid, Gap Cover and Family and Business Protection
Where financial planning meets real life.
Nicky’s strength sits in the dimensions of financial planning that touch people most personally — health cover, family life and risk protection, and the broader planning toolkit that sits behind both. With deep knowledge of South Africa’s medical aid and gap cover landscape, she helps clients and companies navigate some of the most confusing decisions they will ever make — and then builds the rest of the financial picture around that foundation with equal care.
Among clients she is known for her patience, her warmth, and an almost encyclopaedic grasp of which scheme, plan and structure actually suits a specific family’s needs. Nicky makes an overwhelming category feel simple — and then keeps making the whole financial plan feel that way too.
THE FACE OF THE PRACTICE
Jordan-Lee Barnes
Administration | Client Service
. . . and the engine room behind it.
Jordan-Lee is the first person clients see when they walk through the door and the first voice they hear when they call. She is the consistent, warm presence that makes the practice feel like a home rather than an office — the kind of energy that quietly takes the edge off a serious business and reminds people that wealth, at its best, is a human story.
Underneath the warmth she is meticulous, dependable, and three steps ahead. She is the reason nothing at Skybridge falls through the cracks, and the reason her clients always walk away feeling she has gone further for them than she had to.
THE OPERATING PARTNER
CHERISE VAN ROOYEN
OPERATIONS SUPPORT | COMPLIANCE
The quiet operating discipline behind every client relationship.
Cherise sits at the centre of the work that holds Skybridge together once a client is on board. She runs the compliance operations that keep every relationship watertight — gathering, checking, filing and following up on the paperwork that protects clients long after the conversation ends — and partners directly with each of the wealth planners to prepare for client reviews, making sure they walk into every meeting with everything they need at their fingertips.
She is methodical, exacting, and quietly indispensable. Where the wealth planners do the listening and the strategy, Cherise does the disciplined follow-through that turns advice into outcomes — the reason a portfolio review is calm rather than chaotic, and the reason nothing important about a client’s life ever quietly drifts.
THE NEXT GENERATION
EMMA-JANE SMITH
Intern: Marketing & Visual Communication
CREDENTIALS
BA Visual Communication (in progress), Red & Yellow Creative School of Business | Focus: brand systems, design thinking & financial-services creative
The fresh eye in the room.
Emma-Jane is completing her BA in Visual Communication at the Red & Yellow Creative School of Business, and brings a designer’s instinct into a financial firm — the lateral, creative thinking that keeps a boutique business growing in ways a spreadsheet alone never could. Her interest in the financial world is rare for someone her age, and exactly the reason she is part of this team.
