People under financial strain tend to go looking for more credit before they look for advice. Debt-review data, search behaviour, and two-pot withdrawals suggest where that pathway runs, and where the industry could meet people sooner.
The financial advice gap is usually described as a question of access: how many South Africans have an adviser, and how to reach the rest. Momentum’s 2025 Financial Advice Research, conducted with Unisa’s Bureau of Market Research, found that only 9% of households use a professional or certified financial adviser. Seventy-seven percent rely on their own knowledge (Link between size of household investments and financial advice).
I want to look at a narrower question that matters to advisers: when a household comes under financial pressure, where does it turn first? I am a debt counsellor, so I see the end of that journey. What I see suggests that for many people, the first stop is not advice. It is another loan.
That is a hypothesis, not a proven fact, and I will be careful about what the evidence can support. But several independent data sources point the same way.
What people carry by the time they ask for help
Since December 2025 my practice has published anonymised aggregates from its debt-review applications as the South African Financial Pressure Index (SAFPI). In the June to August 2026 window, the median applicant was committing 58.4% of net monthly income to debt repayments before housing, food or transport, across 1,174 applications. More than half (56.0%) were above 50%. Personal loans made up 65.4% of the R79.02 million in unsecured balances (SAFPI, August 2026).
Those figures describe people who have already asked a debt counsellor for help, not the population. But they show how far a household’s position can deteriorate before it asks. Nobody arrives at 58% overnight. The typical path is a series of loans, each affordable on the day it was granted, with the next one often taken to service the last.
Looking for credit, not advice
The behavioural signal that caught my attention came from search data rather than applications. In the 90 days to late August 2026, 63% of the organic search clicks reaching our website came from people searching for loans or credit, not debt help (SAFPI, August 2026). These were people who typed something like “loans for blacklisted” and landed on a debt counsellor’s page instead.
That figure needs a caveat. It reflects which of our pages rank in Google, so it describes our traffic, not the country’s intentions. National search volumes give a fairer comparison. According to Google Ads estimates for South Africa, “loans” is searched about 135 000 times a month, “payday loans” about 49 500, and “loans for blacklisted” about 22 200. “Debt review” draws about 8 100 searches a month and “debt counselling” about 1 300 (Google Ads keyword data via DataForSEO, 12 months to August 2026). Search terms are an imperfect proxy for need. But the ratio is striking: for every search for formal debt help, there are more than 20 for credit.
The direction of travel matters too. Monthly searches for “payday loans” rose from about 40 500 in September 2025 to about 74 000 in August 2026. The bureau data shows the same appetite. In the second quarter of 2025, consumers initiated 15.28 million enquiries on their own credit records while seeking credit, up 30.5% year on year (NCR Credit Bureau Monitor, Q2 2025).
FinScope’s 2025 consumer survey puts that behaviour in context. An estimated 12 million adults are over-indebted, 43% of adults used credit to buy food in 2024, and 37% of formal borrowers reported problems repaying (FinMark Trust, FinScope Consumer South Africa 2025). Credit is doing the job that savings, insurance, and planning were meant to do.
People do not know where they stand
The second behavioural finding is about information. Before an applicant’s status is checked against the National Credit Regulator’s debt-review register, we ask whether they think they are already under debt review. Of the 786 who answered in the June to August window, 51.3% said they were not sure. Where a stated belief could be compared with the register (383 people), one in four had it wrong (SAFPI).
That is a group of people making decisions about credit without knowing their own legal position. It is also a group an adviser would struggle to help without first establishing the facts.
The retirement fund is already a debt tool
Advisers do not need our data to see this pathway. It shows up in their clients’ retirement savings. Momentum Corporate data reported this month found that 44% of two-pot withdrawals were used to pay off debt, with another 23% going to everyday living expenses (IOL, September 2026). Repeat claims now dominate. Momentum found that only 5% of its March 2026 claims were first withdrawals, and Old Mutual reported that 79% of members who withdrew to settle debt expect to withdraw again (Two-pot withdrawals surge as repeat claims reshape savings behaviour).
Put simply, the savings pot has become a debt-servicing facility for a large group of fund members, and many of them are going back to it.
What the evidence can and cannot show
None of these sources proves that consumers reach advisers too late. SAFPI describes one practice’s applicants. Search data measures what people type, not what they need. The two-pot figures describe fund members, who are already employed and already inside the financial system. And we have no direct data on how many SAFPI applicants had an adviser.
What the sources do show, consistently, is a sequence. Under pressure, households reach first for credit, then for their savings, and only later for professional help. By the time they ask a debt counsellor, the median household is committing more than half its income to debt. Whether an adviser could have changed that path earlier is the open question. It is a question the industry has the data to test.
What this may mean for advice
If the hypothesis holds, the advice gap is not only about the 91% of households without an adviser. It is also about timing: the moments when a household is already making a financial decision under pressure and nobody qualified is in the conversation. Three of those moments are visible.
The two-pot claim. A withdrawal request from the savings component is a clear signal of pressure. Funds, administrators and employers could attach a short, genuine financial check-up to that moment, rather than processing the claim alone. The fact that most claims are now repeat claims makes that intervention point more valuable, not less.
The employee-benefits conversation. Many workers only meet an adviser through their employer’s benefits structure. That is where debt stress is visible early, in garnishee orders, loan deductions, and salary-advance requests, and where a referral pathway to budgeting help or debt counselling could sit.
The credit decision itself. A consumer searching for a fourth loan is making a financial-planning decision without advice. Financial literacy content, tools, and referral routes that meet people at the search, not only in the adviser’s office, would reach a group the traditional model rarely sees.
Debt counselling is the last line, not the first. The more useful goal, for advisers and debt counsellors alike, is to meet households two or three loans earlier. The data suggests they are looking for help. They are just looking in the wrong place.
Rowan Breeds is a director and NCR-registered debt counsellor at Debt Solutions 4 U, which publishes the South African Financial Pressure Index, a monthly index built from anonymised debt-review application data.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the writer and are not necessarily shared by Moonstone Information Refinery or its sister companies.
