Mar 11,2026 
By SignatureGroup 
In 2026, Signature Business Solutions marks nearly two decades in business. Not with fanfare, but with something far more enduring: the quiet confidence of an organisation that has earned its place inside some of the most complex financial environments in South Africa.
From a single founding vision to a team approaching 300 colleagues, the journey has never been about noise or hype. It has been shaped, steadily and deliberately, by solving real operational problems for real institutions. Banks, insurers, investment managers, and enterprise finance teams who cannot afford to get it wrong.
Today, more than 5 billion transactions are reconciled every month through iCompare, Signature’s proprietary automation platform. That number is not a marketing headline. It is a measure of responsibility and a daily reminder that accuracy, control, and resilience are not negotiable when the financial system depends on them.
We Started Inside Operations, Not Outside Them
Signature Business Solutions was built on a foundational belief: financial institutions rarely fail because of a lack of ambition. They struggle because of operational friction.
Payments that fail to reconcile. Fees that don’t align. Data that lives across multiple systems but can’t be trusted. Regulatory submissions that remain hostage to manual effort. These are the problems that slow institutions down, inflate risk, and limit growth. Not a shortage of talent or intent.
Founder Carl Harris built the business by working directly inside this complexity. Not observing it from a distance, but embedded within it, alongside the operational teams navigating it every day.
Signature’s early work spanned some of the most technically demanding environments in South African financial services: EFT and SEC flows, VISA Base I and II processing, SAMOS and BankServ settlements, real-time payments and clearing processes, and treasury liquidity and settlement controls.
The pattern that emerged across every engagement was consistent. The challenge was never capability. It was scale.
As transaction volumes increased, spreadsheets multiplied. Exception queues grew. Risk crept in quietly, gradually, and then all at once. Working harder was not the answer. The systems had to become smarter.
The Birth of iCompare: Built from Necessity, Not Theory
iCompare was not a product idea in search of a market. It was born from direct operational necessity.
Working inside high-volume financial environments where millions of transactions moved daily, Signature’s teams experienced firsthand what manual reconciliation processes cost: time, accuracy, and confidence. Institutions needed more than additional headcount. They needed intelligent automation that could scale with them.
So Signature built it.
iCompare was engineered from the ground up to handle complexity at scale. The platform pulls data from APIs, Kafka streams, and file drops, runs configurable validation rules, executes high-volume matching algorithms, surfaces anomalies in real time, and alerts business stakeholders the moment high-value discrepancies emerge. It was designed not for convenience, but for the unforgiving demands of enterprise financial operations.
Over time, the platform expanded alongside the regulatory landscape. As frameworks such as IFRS 17, SAM, PPR, and FAIS intensified requirements across the insurance sector, iCompare grew beyond core reconciliation to encompass expectation processes for pre-validation, data integration engines, validation and transformation rule engines, and customised reporting frameworks.
Today, iCompare processes more than 5 billion transactions every month, achieving a 98 percent automated hit rate. That scale was not assembled overnight. It was built patiently, system by system, client by client, over nearly two decades.
Trusted by South Africa’s Leading Financial Institutions
Signature’s work spans banking, insurance and cell captives, investments, employee benefits, and rewards ecosystems. The organisations that have chosen to partner with Signature are among the most significant in South African financial services, including Discovery, Standard Bank, Absa, Old Mutual, TymeBank, RMB, and Sanlam.
In the investment space, that trust carries particular weight. Approximately 65 percent of South Africa’s unit trust back office is run through Signature Business Solutions Investments. That’s a statistic that reflects not just the platform’s capability, but the governance standards and long-term thinking that underpin it.
Automation in these environments is never simply about speed. It is about control, auditability, and ensuring that when regulators ask questions, the answers are clear, accessible, and defensible. The institutions that depend on Signature understand this, which is why the relationships run deep and the standards run high.
Closing the Loop: The Rise of CoreSync
As Signature’s automation capability matured, a structural gap came into focus. Reconciliation that operates in isolation from ERP systems creates fragmentation. Validated data that doesn’t flow cleanly into financial reporting, and operational accuracy that doesn’t translate into management visibility.
To close that loop, Signature built CoreSync, its Sage Intacct division.
Under the leadership of Maryke Kruger, Chief Strategy Officer at Signature and CEO of CoreSync, the division has grown into one of South Africa’s leading Sage Intacct partners. CoreSync delivers Sage Intacct implementation and integration, payroll implementation, and Accounting as a Service, ensuring that the data validated by iCompare flows accurately into the ERP systems that drive financial reporting and decision-making.
Maryke’s leadership has been central to a principle that Signature holds firmly: automation without integration is incomplete, and integration without control is exposed. Together, Signature and CoreSync complete an ecosystem where operational validation and financial reporting reinforce each other, not as separate disciplines, but as a single connected capability.
Almost 20 Years, and Still Building
Approaching two decades in business gives an organisation perspective, and perspective sharpens purpose.
Signature has grown to almost 300 colleagues across multiple divisions. Graduate programmes actively develop young professionals in SQL, data validation, financial logic, and automation frameworks. Investment in infrastructure, governance, and long-term partnerships has been consistent and deliberate.
But growth has never been the only metric that matters.
Signature’s mission is to create lasting value for customers and people by harnessing skills, innovation, and technology to drive meaningful impact. Its vision is to become a leading global service provider for business automation and process innovation.
These are not statements on a wall. They are the commitments that shape how the business operates, how it hires, how it builds, how it partners, and how it grows.
Why Reconciliation Has Become Strategic Infrastructure
The financial services landscape is accelerating in ways that make operational excellence more critical than ever.
Real-time payments are becoming the standard, not the exception. Transaction volumes are compounding. Regulatory oversight is tightening across every sector. Data granularity requirements are intensifying. In this environment, reconciliation is not a back-office activity. It is strategic infrastructure, the foundation on which financial institutions build trust, comply with regulation, and compete effectively.
Data validation is not administrative hygiene. It is competitive advantage.
The birth of iCompare marked a turning point for Signature, the moment the business evolved from operational support to intelligent financial automation at scale. Processing more than 5 billion transactions every month is not something the organisation speaks about lightly. It is a daily reminder that the work matters, that accuracy has consequences, and that the people and systems behind that number carry a real responsibility.
The Road Ahead
As Signature approaches its twentieth year, the organisation remains what it has always been: a student of the industries it serves.
Investment continues in smarter automation, stronger integrations, better governance frameworks, graduate development, and long-term partnerships. The ambition to operate globally is real, but it is being pursued in the same way the business has always grown: thoughtfully, with discipline, and grounded in genuine capability.
From a single founding vision to almost 300 colleagues strong, the journey has been steady and purpose-driven. Signature did not set out to build software for its own sake. It set out to solve operational complexity, the kind that keeps finance leaders awake, that erodes confidence in data, and that limits what institutions can achieve.
iCompare was born from that intent. CoreSync expanded it.
And as financial systems continue to evolve, Signature will evolve with them, humbly, persistently, and with the same commitment to building infrastructure that makes finance stronger, more accurate, and more resilient for everyone who depends on it.
Mar 12, 2026
