Details
This is an in-person and online event
Date: Thursday, 24th April 2025
Start time: 13:00 PM SAST
Duration: 1 hour
Practitioner: Dr Thomas Brennan
Company: Franc
Location: UCT, SoE, Seminar Room
RSVP Link: Form link
Streaming available
About the Speaker: Thomas Brennan
After completing a Bachelors in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Cape Town, Thomas Brennan was awarded the Rhodes Scholarship in 2004. In 2009 he completed his D.Phil. in Engineering Science from the University of Oxford. Prior to completing his D.Phil he interned with Google in Zürich as an associated product manager and Man Investments as a quantitative analyst. After completing his D.Phil, he then worked for Vodafone developing a mobile-based platform to monitor and support community health workers in South Africa’s public health sector.
In 2010, he accepted a Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Oxford to develop and assess mobile health solutions for monitoring chronic disease in resource-constrained settings. In 2012, he took up a position as Research Engineer at the Laboratory of Computation Physiology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) working on clinical data mining applications.
In 2015 he returned to South Africa to take up a Senior Innovation Manager role within Discovery’s R&D lab where he led the development and launch of Discovery Health’s Smart Plan (the fastest growing health plan in South Africa) and DiabetesCare.
In 2017, he was promoted to lead Discovery Health’s Technology and Innovation team. In early 2018, he left Discovery and founded Franc, a self-insurance platform. He is currently CEO and co-founder of Franc Group (Pty) Ltd, a platform that makes smart investing simple and accessible to everyone. He has over 20 years of experience in management, product development, software engineering, machine learning and financial services.
About the Company: Franc
Franc is a South African investment app designed to make investing accessible and straightforward for everyone. On Franc, South Africans can save, invest and learn about investments.
FinHub Practitioner Seminars
This seminar is part of a series which has been created to expose UCT MPhil in Fintech students to exceptional individuals in the African Fintech space working on innovative solutions to address the large unbanked population on our continent. Fintech in Africa has received the largest share of funding in recent years, and this trend is expected to increase. As the only dedicated Fintech Master's program on the African continent, one of our goals is to connect our students with leading fintech companies across the continent. In the past, we have had speakers from Nala, Stitch Money, Visa, Spoon Money, Consensys, Authentium, Investec and more. Because seminars have attracted interest from students across campus, any student or individual interested in fintech and related topics are welcome to attend.
