INN8 – An Unbelievable Display of Incompetence at Every Level

As a financial planner, I’ve had my fair share of challenges with various product providers, but nothing comes close to the sheer inefficiency and poor service delivery I’ve experienced with INN8. It’s honestly difficult to express just how appalling the service is without sounding exaggerated—yet everything I write here is based on personal experience over several months.

Let’s start with the basics: I’ve spent countless hours emailing, calling, and meeting with INN8 staff—trying to conclude straightforward transactions. These weren’t complicated matters, yet even with continuous follow-ups and escalations to team leaders, their managers, and eventually the operations manager (Chris Cronje), progress remained painfully slow or non-existent.

Chris Cronje himself has made promises which ultimately amounted to nothing. His word means very little, and I caution anyone against relying on what he says.

The operational staff are equally disappointing. Emails are routinely ignored or misunderstood. Responses often indicate they haven’t even read the full context of the communication. They regularly claim to follow up with providers, but once feedback is received, they seem directionless and incapable of progressing the matter logically.

To illustrate the dysfunction:

I have two sisters who invested identical amounts on the same day in the same fund—and yet their fund values differed just days later. How is that even possible?

In another case, I was told to delay a client’s withdrawal while INN8 "cleared an error"—only to later be told there was no error to begin with. This cost the client out of the fund. And its costing me R600 a month of no on going fee

A client sent in signed forms weeks in advance. INN8 took weeks after that just to forward them to the transferring provider.

They constantly blame delays on their peers. So, I took the initiative and called the peer provider myself—only to learn that for six months, INN8 had been emailing the wrong address and using member numbers instead of policy numbers to identify clients. And this was on a case “attended” by five senior representatives and multiple management personal.

On that very same day, I was copied in a request where INN8 emailed a unit trust servicing address asking for retirement annuity (section 14) documents—confusing two entirely different products. This level of error is unacceptable for any financial services provider, let alone one that claims to offer digital investment platform.

In the case I’m referring to here, a transaction that should take no more than 180 days has gone nowhere. INN8 managed to complete only the first stage—submitting a single form. This was despite escalations and so-called “direct servicing” by their team lead.

It amazes me how I’ve had so many personal dealings with this company across simple transactions, and collectively they’ve all failed to reach completion. INN8 is, without question, the worst financial services provider I’ve worked with in the industry.

They need to be held accountable for the harm caused to clients and the time wasted by professionals like myself who are simply trying to get things done.

Avoid them at all costs.