Fanie Cronje’s career in the financial services industry began in 1983 with a company in the Sage / Nedbank Group. Within two years, he founded Cronjé & Co, and within five years, won the Old Mutual Small Businessman of the Year Award and joined the IPC (Independent Professional Consultants) Group. He is a Certified Financial Planner and a member of the Financial Planning Institute of South Africa.

Ysbrand Gert Visser joined the company on 1 August 2014 as an accredited Financial Advisor.

The Independent Professional Consultants Group was formed to source highly specialised products – exclusive products that members were able to offer their investors. IPC grew nationwide, and eventually boomed into the Senate Group.

During 1986, a working relationship was formed between the members of a group of Gauteng based brokers. The purpose of this relationship (which took the form of a monthly working breakfast) was to establish a forum for the exchange of ideas and the combination of specialised products that the members could offer their clients.

In 1987, the membership was extended to include the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, and it became necessary to formalise the relationship. The IPC Group was then founded, and a constitution was drawn up. The IPC Association lasted for many years, until the founding of the Senate Group (Pty) Ltd in 1998.

The Senate Group was responsible for the development of the first ever Preservation Fund in South Africa when both the Incentive Provident Fund and the Incentive Pension Fund were registered in 1989. The creative skills of the members were instrumental in the establishment of the Linked Product Industry in 1989 (LISPs). UAL was approached to create the product and André Immelman, from Technical Management Assignments (today TMA), was commandeered to write complex computer programs to create an industry which today administers unit trust portfolios of around R1,7 to R2.0 trillion.