The Fourths

Johannesburg · London · Engineering for regulated industries

Software that works in
regulated industries.

We build production-grade platforms for fintech, insurance, and healthcare founders in South Africa and the UK.

Book a Discovery CallSee what we've built

Johannesburg (SAST) · London (GMT/BST)

Trusted by
Mitig8Gable MortgagesThe GrindSource & Style

What we do

Nine ways we work with you.

From one-off builds to long-term engineering partnerships — everything starts with the same question: what does this platform need to survive production?

Platform Engineering
Production-grade SaaS and internal platforms. Architecture, build, and ongoing ownership from database schema to deployment pipeline.
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AI Integration
AI that fits into your existing stack. Document processing, RAG pipelines, and workflow automation — with POPIA and FCA guardrails built in from day one.
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Technical Strategy
The CTO perspective without the full-time salary. Architecture decisions, vendor evaluation, and technical due diligence on a retainer your finance team can approve.
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Compliance Systems
Software that passes the audit before the auditors arrive. POPIA, FCA, MCOB, and FSCA requirements built into the architecture — not bolted on after.
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Performance Tracking
Dashboards, analytics pipelines, and reporting systems that give leadership real numbers — not summaries of summaries built on stale exports.
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AI Agent Systems
Purpose-built AI agents for operations — document handling, internal routing, customer triage. Production-grade systems, not proof-of-concept demos.
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Web Design & Campaigns
Agency-grade web design for companies that cannot afford generic. Marketing sites, campaign pages, and digital presence built to convert — not just to look good in a Figma review.
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M365 Managed Services
Microsoft 365 environment management, security hardening, and ongoing administration. One team for your product stack and your business tooling.
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Retainer Partnership
A dedicated engineering team, billed monthly. No project-end exits. No knowledge transfer taxes. Your platform, continuously owned by the team that built it.
How it works

Featured work

Mitig8 — Insurance compliance, rebuilt from first principles.

A multi-tenant risk management platform for South African insurance brokers. POPIA-compliant and FSCA-audit-ready — built on Azure from the ground up, not retrofitted.

InsurancePOPIAFSCAMulti-tenantAzure
Read case study
[X]+
Insurance professionals on platform
30
Azure Functions in production
100%
Audit log coverage on all regulated records

Who we work with

Find your starting point.

Three types of founders and operators work with us. Different problems, the same standard of engineering.

01 / SA Founder
Building a platform in fintech, insurance, or edtech?
South African founders who need production-grade engineering and a team that understands POPIA from the database up. Retainer from R18,750/mo. 12-month minimum.
Platform Engineering
02 / SA Ops Director
Running operations that need AI — without compliance risk?
Ops directors at 20-200 person companies. Document processing, workflow automation, internal tools. We build what works in your actual stack. From R37,500/mo.
AI Integration
03 / UK Compliance Buyer
FCA-regulated and building software that has to be right?
UK financial services firms. We have delivered MCOB-compliant mortgage technology and understand what Consumer Duty means at the code level. From £1,000/mo.
Compliance Systems

From the blog

What we're writing about.

All posts
Compliance Engineering
POPIA compliance is an engineering decision, not a legal one.
8 min read · May 2026
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AI for Operations
What AI integration actually means for a 20-person fintech.
7 min read · May 2026
Read
Founder to Scale
The fractional CTO model: when retainer beats full-time.
6 min read · May 2026
Read
The Fourths

Discovery calls are
30 minutes.

We'll tell you if we're not the right fit.

Book a Discovery Call