Author

Wes Thomson is the Managing Partner of ProLend and writes the guides in the Learn section. He built the platform, and he writes about private lending the way he had to learn it — from the structure outwards, not from the sales pitch inwards.

Why he writes these

ProLend exists because private lending in South Africa is explained badly. It is either dressed up as a get-rich scheme or buried in product documentation nobody reads. The guides here are an attempt at the third thing: an honest explanation of how the structure works, what secures the capital, what happens when a borrower does not pay, and how it compares to the things people already understand — a fixed deposit, a unit trust, a rental property.

Every article is written to be useful whether or not you ever speak to ProLend. That is deliberate. Someone who understands the mechanics and decides it is not for them has been served properly.

Background

Wes spent five years as a British Royal Marine Commando, then worked as a security and risk consultant across the United Kingdom, India, Djibouti and Dubai. He holds an MSc in Security Management from the University of Portsmouth and a diploma in Risk Management, and has published on risk assessment techniques and methods.

In 2016 he founded Veterans for Wildlife, an international conservation charity he grew over four years to raise in excess of £300,000 annually across five countries. He now manages several companies in South Africa and the United Kingdom, and advises a number of non-profit organisations.

What that background is, and is not

It is a risk background, not a financial-services one — and that is the honest description of it. What it brings to these guides is a habit of asking what actually secures a position, what happens in the bad case rather than the good one, and whether a structure holds up when it is tested. That is the lens the articles are written through.

What it does not make him is a financial adviser, and nothing here is written as advice.