To manage a growing portfolio of residential funding projects in South Africa, non-bank financial services company TUHF needed to bring its full financial picture — both funding and loans across 20 business entities — onto a single platform. By moving financial planning and analysis (FP&A) to Anaplan, TUHF accelerated annual budgeting 50%, made scenario analysis an always-on capability, enabled benchmarking against key metrics, and de-risked operations by enabling collaboration

Since its launch in 2003, TUHF has arranged funding for more than 46,000 housing units across South Africa. TUHF, a non-bank financial services company, is dedicated to making it easier for people to find affordable residential and commercial properties. It raises money from capital markets and provides mortgages to clients who build, rebuild, or buy rental properties in cities.

TUHF’s top priority is ensuring that every project delivers positive results for communities and investors. As TUHF grew and offered more complex funding structures, its lean finance team found budgeting and forecasting increasingly difficult to manage.

“We wanted to look at various scenarios to see how they impacted our bottom line and the interests of our shareholders,” explains Chief Financial Officer Ilona Roodt of TUHF. “We didn’t want to rely on spreadsheets, which are complex and fraught with human error.”

Building a more connected future

To address these challenges, TUHF teamed up with Bedford Consulting to move financial planning and analysis (FP&A) to Anaplan. “Working with multiple stakeholders at Anaplan and Bedford means that we’re no longer reliant on a single individual or a single spreadsheet solution for financial forecasting and budgeting,” Roodt says.

The Anaplan solution is comprehensive, unlike the fragmented system it replaced. “We have the loan book on one side, and funding on the other,” Roodt explains. “We chose Anaplan to bring those together.” TUHF’s five-year forecasting model enables the TUHF finance team to monitor loan book growth and benchmark its performance against standard metrics like return on equity (ROE) and cost-to-income ratios. The budgeting solution in Anaplan is similarly powerful, handling all 20 business entities within TUHF.

Achieving next-level efficiency

Routine finance activities at TUHF are up to eight times faster with Anaplan. “Before using Anaplan, our budgeting and forecasting process used to take around four months,” Roodt recalls. “Using the Anaplan solution, the same process will take half the time.”

Scenario development is similarly faster: “Our old way relied on a consultant and a member of the finance team locked down for months creating spreadsheets for scenario analysis,” says Roodt. “With Anaplan, we build our models once, then change assumptions to generate new forecasts. It’s an ongoing process that we can revisit throughout the year. That’s a massive change for us.”

The Anaplan platform has also unlocked powerful collaboration opportunities. “Ultimately, teamwork is around working together, and it’s not about a single person,” Roodt says. “That is the beauty of connectedness.”