Fulcrum Collections – Building Belief in a New Future

When Jade Jensen took over as Managing Director of Fulcrum Collections in January 2022, she inherited more than just the leadership of a long-established financial services company. She stepped into a storm.

Fulcrum handled billions in collections every month for short-term insurance brokers, money that had to move accurately, securely, and on time. Yet behind the scenes, their technology was buckling under the strain of growth and industry change. A new product, AirCollect, meant to revolutionize the way premiums were split between insurers and brokers, was faltering. The business’s core platform, Excellence, was outdated and overextended.

At the same time, Jade was stepping into the role after a long-serving predecessor, during a period of significant change for the business. While the leadership transition itself had been well communicated internally, uncertainty remained around the future of AirCollect and whether the product would deliver on its promise.

Fulcrum had always seen itself as a service company: lean, client-focused, and operationally sharp. But as the industry evolved, so too did the expectations of insurers and brokers. “To really play properly in the tech world,” Jade says, “we had to own the product we were building. No one’s ever going to be as passionate about your product as you are.”

With the guidance of their coach, Jade and her leadership team began a total rebuild of their technology capabilities. They made the bold decision to part ways with their outsourced developers and start again, this time with a new partner and their own internal IT team.

They hired their first CTO, built a small but capable development and business analysis team, and began constructing a new technology platform called Cirrus, one that would eventually replace Excellence and power AirCollect into the future.

“It wasn’t easy,” Jade says. “We were taking an old system that didn’t work properly, trying to fix it while building a new one, all while keeping the business running at full speed. But we made the right decisions, even when they weren’t popular.”

Their coach remembers those early days clearly. “When I started with Fulcrum, things were under significant strain. Technical issues, billing errors, people under pressure. Jade had inherited not just a system problem but a people problem, a team that was fractured and a culture heavy with corridor talk.”

Through coaching, Jade and her team began to address both the structural and interpersonal challenges. Their coach worked with every member of her leadership team, individually and together, to rebuild alignment, trust, and clarity of roles.

Three key leaders emerged as the engine behind the turnaround: Pauli Lombard, once GM of Operations, transitioned into the new role of Product Owner, bridging the gap between business and technology. Tarryn Lochner, originally a team leader, was promoted through several levels to become GM of Operations, where her natural people skills and clarity of communication could shine. Geraldine Lotz, who oversaw the financial and banking side of the business, expanded her team to manage growing complexity and volumes.

Each promotion reflected a deliberate effort to align people with their strengths, a shift that Jade and her coach credit as one of the biggest turning points.

“Our coach worked with everyone,” Jade explains. “He could see where people’s strengths really were. And because of that, we were able to put people in roles that truly suited them. Pauli’s thriving in product development, Tarryn’s thriving in operations, Geraldine’s team has grown. Everyone’s found their stride.”

As part of their work with Grow, the Fulcrum leadership team adopted a structured rhythm of annual and quarterly strategic planning workshops. These sessions helped the team focus on the few things that mattered most.

“In the early days,” Jade reflects, “those strategy sessions were invaluable. They gave us direction and forced us to balance our focus, between the technology transformation and the service excellence that clients expected. Over time, those workshops created alignment across the business.”

By involving shareholders in key strategy sessions, Jade was also able to shift perceptions at the top. “We presented where we were, where we were going, and how far we’d already come,” she says. “It built credibility and confidence.”

For Jade, the growth wasn’t only technical, it was deeply personal. Moving from GM of Operations into the MD role required her to lead differently.

“I had to learn how to sell the vision to my team,” she says. “They were tired. They’d seen the product fail before. So rebuilding belief was my biggest challenge, getting everyone to see that this wasn’t just another project, it was our future.”

At the same time, Jade was learning to lead upward, managing the expectations of senior stakeholders and shareholders, each with varying perspectives and expectations. As the complexity of the business increased, so did the need for clear, considered communication. 

That growth was reinforced through a company-wide psychometric and leadership development process introduced by Jade and the Fulcrum group’s HR lead, Violet. It helped the team understand one another’s communication styles and decision-making approaches, a foundation that strengthened trust and improved collaboration.

“It’s really changed the culture,” Jade says. “People understand each other better. There’s honesty. There’s accountability. And that’s made us a stronger team.”

The transformation wasn’t just cultural, it was commercial. Fulcrum has delivered record profits year after year, while processing more than R25 billion annually in collections. 

When a major partner transition threatened to derail the rollout, Jade’s team handled it with calm confidence. “Two years ago, that kind of disruption would have set us back significantly,” she says. “Now the team just looked at it and said, ‘Right, how do we make this work?’ And they did.” The successful migration of AirCollect to its new banking partner, Nedbank, was executed seamlessly, a sign of how far the business’s technical capabilities have come.

The culture of self-belief and accountability Jade helped cultivate has become Fulcrum’s defining strength. “It’s not that the pressure’s gone,” she says with a smile. “But we’re confident now. We know we can solve whatever comes our way.”

With the AirCollect rollout gaining momentum and the Cirrus platform poised to provide new flexibility, Fulcrum is turning its focus outward again, onboarding more brokers and exploring new value-added products that can build on their technology foundation.

“The next chapter is about scale,” Jade says. “We’ve done the hard yards, now it’s about taking what we’ve built and expanding its impact.”

Their coach agrees. “Jade’s journey has been remarkable,” he says. “She’s grown from an operational leader into a strategic, emotionally intelligent MD who has earned the trust of her team and shareholders alike. Fulcrum is not just performing, it’s thriving.”

If there’s one theme that threads through the Fulcrum story, it’s belief, in the product, in the people, and in the leader.

“I protect my team fiercely,” Jade says. “They know I won’t let unreasonable expectations be pushed down onto them. That’s why they trust me, and why we trust each other. That’s what makes this team special.”

From a company once defined by uncertainty, Fulcrum Collections has become a case study in disciplined transformation, where technology, leadership, and culture came together to build not just a stronger system, but a stronger business.