WHO BUILT THIS AND WHY
Built by a practitioner.
For practitioners.
finserv-mcp.co.za is the SA Professional Financial Services MCP Server — 33 AI-callable tools grounded in current South African legislation. Every figure is verified. Every source is cited. Every calculation is maintained after every Budget. This page explains who built it, why, and the commitment behind keeping it current.
WANDILE LOKWE — FAIS KEY INDIVIDUAL
Why a 20-year financial services practitioner built a statutory API server
I have spent 20 years in South African financial services — financial planning, estate advisory, insurance, and compliance. I am registered as a FAIS Key Individual through CenturionAI (Pty) Ltd. In that time, I have sat across the table from clients whose estates created problems that should not have existed: a surviving spouse who could not pay estate duty on a liquid-asset-poor estate because no one had calculated it in advance; a company director who had been paying 27% corporate tax for eight years when they qualified for SBC rates all along; a client who cashed out their retirement fund on resignation — paying R80,000 in withdrawal tax — because no one had explained the two-pot system would have given them the emergency cash they needed without destroying their retirement capital.
These are not isolated events. They are the predictable consequence of South African financial practitioners and their clients not having access to fast, precise, legislatively grounded calculation at the moment the decision is being made. The information exists — in SARS publications, Acts of Parliament, Interpretation Notes, and Budget speeches. But it is fragmented, dense, and not accessible in a form that produces a number when you need a number.
In 2024, I built the first version of the SA Professional Financial Services MCP Server as the calculation layer for my own practice tools — EstatePilot for estate case management, FinPlan AI for financial planning, and SmartDoc AI for legal document analysis. It worked. The estate duty calculations were correct. The SBC qualification tests surfaced disqualifiers that spreadsheets missed. The CIPC compliance checker flagged a client company that was 18 months overdue on its annual return.
In 2025, I opened it to other practitioners and developers through finserv-mcp.co.za. The architecture is a FastAPI MCP server deployed on Railway, with a Next.js website on Vercel. The statutory data layer encodes figures from nine Acts of Parliament and is maintained after every February Budget and every SARB MPC meeting. The tools are callable via free web calculators, REST API, or the MCP SSE endpoint for Claude Desktop and AI agent integration.
This is not a startup project or a side experiment. It is the infrastructure I use every day for client work. That is the maintenance commitment behind every statutory figure on this platform — because if a figure is wrong, I am the one advising a client on it.
Wandile Lokwe
FAIS Key Individual
Registered as
FAIS Key Individual
Company
CenturionAI (Pty) Ltd
Location
Centurion, Gauteng, South Africa
Experience
20 years SA financial services
Expertise
Estate admin · Tax · Retirement · FinTech
wandile@centurionai.co.za
081 344 8722
PLATFORM AT A GLANCE
Active tools
33
Modules
5
Acts of Parliament encoded
9+
Figures last updated
Budget 2026/27
Server uptime (Railway)
Production
Next statutory review
March 2027
THE STATUTORY MAINTENANCE COMMITMENT
Every figure on this platform is cited, sourced, and reviewed on a defined schedule
The value of a statutory calculation platform is exactly as high as its most recently verified figure. An estate duty calculator citing the wrong abatement is worse than no calculator — it produces false confidence. This is how the maintenance on finserv-mcp.co.za works.
February Budget (annual)
SARS tax pocket guide published. Income tax brackets, rebates, medical credits, transfer duty table, SBC table, retirement fund limits (RA cap, TFI limits), and VAT thresholds are all reviewed and updated in the statutory data layer. Typically updated within 48 hours of Budget announcement.
FIGURES UPDATED
- •Income tax brackets
- •Transfer duty table
- •RA cap (raised to R430,000 in Budget 2026)
- •VAT registration thresholds (R2.3M from Budget 2026)
SARB MPC meeting (bi-monthly)
SARB Monetary Policy Committee meets six times per year. When the repo rate changes, the SARB rates tool and the SARS prescribed interest rate calculations (which depend on the repo rate) are updated simultaneously. Both sarb_rates_static.py and sars_interest_rates.py are updated together.
FIGURES UPDATED
- •Repo rate
- •Prime lending rate
- •Official rate for fringe benefits (repo + 1%)
- •SARS late payment interest rates
Material legislative amendment
When Parliament passes an amendment Act that changes operative figures — a threshold, abatement, exemption, or rate — the relevant statutory data module is updated. Recent examples: the two-pot system (September 2024), the life partner intestate succession recognition (April 2024), and the VAT threshold change (Budget 2026).
FIGURES UPDATED
- •Two-pot system (September 2024)
- •Life partner intestate succession (April 2024)
- •CIPC beneficial ownership (May 2023)
- •VAT threshold to R2.3M (Budget 2026)
SARS Interpretation Note release
Where SARS publishes or updates an Interpretation Note that affects how the tools calculate results — for example, an update to Interpretation Note 9 (Issue 7) governing SBC qualification — the relevant tool is reviewed and updated if required.
FIGURES UPDATED
- •IN9 Issue 7 (SBC qualification)
- •SARS binding general rulings
- •SARS practice notes
StatsSA CPI release (monthly)
The inflation data tool (get_inflation_data) draws on Statistics South Africa CPI data. The tool is updated after the monthly StatsSA CPI release. Headline CPI, core CPI, food CPI, and SARB's inflation target context are included.
FIGURES UPDATED
- •Headline CPI
- •Core CPI
- •Food CPI
- •SARB target band
CIPC fee schedule update
CIPC publishes annual return fee schedules. When updated, the CIPC compliance tool is revised to reflect current filing fees by turnover bracket. The Beneficial Ownership register requirements and deregistration risk thresholds are also reviewed.
FIGURES UPDATED
- •Annual return fees by turnover
- •BO register requirements
- •Filing window rules
THE CENTURIONAI PORTFOLIO
finserv-mcp.co.za is the calculation layer — here is what it powers
CenturionAI (Pty) Ltd builds AI-augmented financial services tools for the South African market. finserv-mcp.co.za is the statutory data and calculation layer that underpins all of them. The quality of each product depends directly on the accuracy of the underlying calculation engine.
finserv-mcp.co.za
LiveSA Professional Financial Services MCP Server
The platform you are on. 33 AI-callable statutory calculation tools. Free web calculators, REST API, and MCP SSE endpoint for Claude Desktop and AI agents.
Visit →EstatePilot
In developmentEstate case management for South African executors
Manages deceased estate files from Letters of Executorship through L&D account to distribution. Uses finserv-mcp.co.za for estate duty, executor fees, deadline tracking, and liquidity assessment.
FinPlan AI
In developmentFAIS-compliant financial planning
AI-assisted financial planning tool for South African financial advisers. Uses finserv-mcp.co.za for retirement fund projections, RA deductibility, living annuity modelling, and income tax calculations.
SmartDoc AI
In developmentLegal document analysis for SA practitioners
Analyses South African legal documents — wills, sale agreements, shareholder agreements, lease agreements — and flags compliance issues, missing clauses, and statutory references. Uses finserv-mcp.co.za for tax and duty calculations embedded in document review.
LeadRevive
In developmentVoice AI lead reactivation for financial advisers
Automates re-engagement of dormant leads for financial planning practices using voice AI. Not a calculation tool — a practice growth product.
INSURELOANSA
ActiveInsurance and loan comparison for South African consumers
Insurance product comparison and loan facilitation for the South African retail market.
WHY BUILT AS AN MCP SERVER
The Model Context Protocol changes what is possible for South African practitioners
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard developed by Anthropic that allows AI assistants to call external tools directly, mid-conversation. Instead of Claude approximating estate duty based on training data that may be 18 months old, it calls the calculate_estate_duty tool on this server and returns the statutory figure — precisely computed, source-cited, and current.
For South African financial practitioners, this changes the scope of what an AI assistant can reliably help with. Before the MCP server existed, asking Claude or Perplexity for the estate duty on a specific estate was asking it to guess from training data. Now, with the MCP server connected, the AI calls the tool, gets the computation, and attributes it to the correct legislative source.
The same applies to SBC qualification testing, living annuity sustainability modelling, two-pot withdrawal tax calculations, transfer duty, and CIPC compliance checking. Each of these was previously an educated guess from an AI. With the MCP server, each is a statutory computation.
The architecture decision to build this as an MCP server — rather than as a standalone web application — reflects a view about where financial services technology is going. AI assistants will increasingly be the interface through which practitioners and clients interact with financial data. The infrastructure that supplies those assistants with accurate, current statutory data will be as important as the AI models themselves. finserv-mcp.co.za is that infrastructure for South Africa.
WHAT BECOMES POSSIBLE WITH THE MCP SERVER
- ✓
An estate attorney asks Claude Desktop: 'What is the estate duty on this estate?' and gets the precise REV267-ready figure, not an approximation.
- ✓
A financial planner asks their AI assistant to model three different RA contribution scenarios and gets the correct after-tax position under current Budget figures.
- ✓
A developer builds a will-drafting platform that calls calculate_estate_duty and calculate_executor_fees automatically as the will is prepared.
- ✓
An AI assistant answers a client's question about their CIPC compliance status — including the exact due date and filing fee — from a single tool call.
- ✓
A payroll system integrates the calculate_paye tool to verify monthly PAYE deductions against the statutory tables in real time.
THE MAINTENANCE PROMISE
This is not a platform built once and left to age. The statutory figures encoded here are the figures I use for client advisory work at CenturionAI. When SARS publishes the Budget 2027/28 Tax Pocket Guide in February 2027, the tables will be updated before the end of that week. When the SARB changes the repo rate, both the rates tool and the interest rate calculations update together. When Parliament amends an Act, the affected modules are reviewed. That is the commitment.
LEGISLATION ENCODED IN THE PLATFORM
The statutory sources behind every calculation
Estate Duty Act 45 of 1955
s3 (deemed property) · s4 (deductions) · s4A (abatements) · s7 (REV267) · s10 (interest)
Administration of Estates Act 66 of 1965
s18(3) (small estates) · s27 (inventory) · s29 (creditors) · s35 (L&D) · s51 (executor fees)
Intestate Succession Act 81 of 1987 (as amended by JMAA 15/2023)
s1(1) (distribution) · s1(1A) (life partners, effective 3 April 2024)
Income Tax Act 58 of 1962
s11F (RA deductibility) · s12E (SBC) · s12T (TFI) · Second Schedule (retirement tables) · s33 (PAYE) · CGT Eighth Schedule
Transfer Duty Act 40 of 1949
Rate schedule (Budget 2026/27) · s9 (exemptions)
VAT Act 89 of 1991
s7 (standard rate) · s11 (zero-rated) · s20 (tax invoice) · s23 (registration)
Companies Act 71 of 2008
s33 (annual returns) · s82 (deregistration)
Pension Funds Act 24 of 1956
s37C (death benefit distribution) · Living annuity regulations
Revenue Laws Amendment Act (2024)
Two-pot system provisions (effective 1 September 2024)
GET IN TOUCH
Questions about the platform, pricing, or integration?
I respond to every inquiry personally. Whether you are an estate attorney evaluating the estate duty calculator for client use, a developer planning an API integration, or an AI platform evaluating the MCP SSE endpoint — reach out directly.
EXPLORE THE PLATFORM
Start with the free calculators
No account. No credit card. Open any module and run a calculation immediately.
Estate Administration
7 tools · estate duty, executor fees, intestate succession
Personal Tax
8 tools · income tax, CGT, transfer duty, PAYE
Retirement Planning
7 tools · two-pot, living annuity, RA deductibility
Small Business
6 tools · SBC, VAT, CIPC, corporate tax
Economic Context
5 tools · SARB rates, CPI, exchange rates
Learn
Definitive statutory guides · estate duty · two-pot · transfer duty