Steady counsel, clear currents.
We help individuals, families and business owners in the Western Cape turn scattered financial decisions into one defensible plan — tax, retirement, trusts and investment held to a single standard.
Three kinds of client walk through our door
The business owner drawing a salary and a dividend and not sure which is smarter
You run a company, you're the biggest line item on your own payroll, and nobody has sat down with you and SARS's rules at the same time. We will.
The professional whose retirement savings are scattered across three employers
A preservation fund here, a retirement annuity there, and no idea what it adds up to at 65. We consolidate the picture before we touch a single rand of it.
The family managing an inheritance, a trust, or an ageing parent's estate
Money that arrived with obligations attached — beneficiaries, executors, tax deadlines. We handle the structure so the family doesn't have to argue about it.
One process, applied the same way every time
Discovery call
A 45-minute conversation, in person or by video, where we map your income, obligations and what 'sorted' would actually look like for you.
Position review
We pull together your tax, retirement and investment position into one document — often the first time it has existed in one place.
Written recommendation
A plain-language plan with specific actions, ranked by impact and deadline, plus the reasoning behind each one so you can question it.
Implementation and review
We execute what's agreed, then check in twice a year to keep the plan current as your income, the tax tables, or your life changes.
What changes after the first meeting
I'd been paying myself badly for four years without knowing it. Rivermark restructured my salary-dividend split and the saving alone covered their fee three times over in the first year.
They found a preservation fund I'd genuinely forgotten existed. Nobody else had asked the question that surfaced it.
Our family trust had been drifting for a decade. Rivermark rewrote the governance in six weeks and now every beneficiary actually understands their position.
A small team, deliberately
Marius van der Berg
Nineteen years advising Cape Town business owners on tax and structuring. Marius leads every first consultation personally.
Thandiwe Mahlangu
Formerly a trust officer at a national bank; now the person clients call when a beneficiary dispute or a fund consolidation needs a steady hand.
Johan Nel
Ex-SARS auditor turned advisor. Johan builds the tax models behind every recommendation Rivermark puts on paper.
Layla Adams
Keeps the paperwork, deadlines and follow-ups moving so your plan doesn't stall between review meetings.
Questions we're asked most
Not a sales pitch — a written position
What makes our approach different
We write everything down
Every recommendation arrives as a document, not a verbal suggestion — with the reasoning shown, so you or your accountant can interrogate it before anything is implemented.
We're not paid to sell you a product
Our fee is fixed and quoted upfront. When we recommend a fund, a structure or a trust amendment, it's because the numbers support it, not because it carries a commission.
We keep the client list small on purpose
Four advisors, a deliberately capped caseload, and a policy of the founder attending every first consultation — so the plan you receive was actually built for your numbers, not adapted from someone else's.
Bring us your numbers. We'll bring you a plan.
No obligation, no charge for the first consultation, and a written recommendation within a week of your position review.