Load shedding isn’t going away forever anytime soon. We know it, you know it, Eskom knows it and, apparently, Discovery Bank knows it. Earlier this morning, the bank confirmed its partnership with Rubicon, which it called “a trusted industry leader in solar solutions”. The partnership will allow Discovery Bank to offer its clients competitive financing options for solar and backup energy solutions.
The available products include entire solar installations, with smaller items such as inverters and backup batteries also included.
Discovery Bank CEO, Hylton Kallner, said:
“While South Africans are resilient, the increased and ongoing interruption of electricity impacts all aspects of our lives and drives a need to find alternative ways to power our homes. We’re pleased to launch a financing solution that enables our clients to embrace solar, with the help of an excellent partner in Rubicon.”
More charge than a power bank
As for when you’ll be getting the solar offerings installed, we can’t know for sure. Discovery said, “[t]he offering has been launched initially to select clients and will be available more broadly over the coming weeks.” Those “select” clients are the bank’s Purple members. They will have first dibs on Discovery Bank’s new solar solutions.
Once rolled out to all customers, however, the wide range of offerings will be made accessible through the bank’s dedicated portal – discovery.rubicon.tech – equipped with a household energy calculator that’ll help you determine your solar needs. The calculator will spit out a figure that you can expect to pay, based on your budget, the size of your house, and your energy consumption and offer suggestions of the best kit to suit your needs.
Installations should take no more than three weeks, according to the bank, with Rubicon’s own ‘energy advisors’ being roped in to speed up the process. The words “guaranteed installation” were thrown around in Discovery’s press release, speaking to Discovery’s confidence in the new offerings and subsequent installation.
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The bank confirmed that its customers would have the option of flexible funding, like that of the company’s dedicated solar budget facility with interest rates from prime –2% over the course of 72 months. If six years sounds a little too steep, Discovery has said that its finance offerings can go as low as six months, though no higher than 72 months.
Should you want to settle that fee even earlier, Kallner said that customers could do so without being penalised.
“The products carry a flat discount applied to all our clients, not linked to the status of Vitality Money, but where status counts is on the dynamic interest rate that you pay on the finance, so the higher your status, the lower the repayments,” according to Kallner, speaking with News24.
UPDATE 12/6/23 — The original version of this article failed to cite News24 for the final quote. This has been corrected. We apologise and regret the error.
