Benchmark research shows South Africans worse off now than 30 years ago In August, Sanlam Employee Benefits (SEB) presented the results of its 2011 Benchmark survey, a comprehensive annual review of South Africa’s retirement industry. Now in its thirty-first year, the most recent research has allowed Sanlam to take a retrospective look at retirement in …. »
French novelist, Victor Hugo, may well have been speaking of the self insurance of employee benefits (EB) when he said: “There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come”. The increased self insurance of EB programmes is not just a local phenomenon. Internationally, more and more companies are placing their employee benefit …. »
Lourens Coetzee, an investment professional at Marriott Asset Management looks at the impact of various draw down rates on ones living annuity and notes that the survival rates with high draw downs are extremely low. Take the pain now for a better long term future: living annuity survival rate shock Retired investors commonly face the …. »
The retirement fund-related changes announced in the 2011/2012 Budget herald a significant change for the retirement savings industry and members will have to rethink their retirement planning carefully. The announcement by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan that from March 2012 any contribution made by an employer to a retirement fund on behalf of its employees would …. »
A recent ruling by the PFA reveals the pitfalls of early withdrawal of retirement benefits, particularly where contract work and regular breaks in employment occur. Qondile Dyosi of Port Elizabeth worked intermittently for construction firm Murray and Roberts for 27 years from 1982 until his employment was terminated on 28 February 2009. He was a …. »
The Acting Pension Funds Adjudicator has dismissed the case of a South African woman living in the United States of America, who sought an order directing her former spouse’s South African retirement annuity funds to pay her a share of the pension interest assigned to her in terms of their US divorce decree. Former Durbanite, …. »
Living annuities face a credibility crisis as the consequences of three years of market weakness and volatility hit home. We have sounded the early alert on a looming stress test for this popular method of assuring retirement income. Living annuities were never the retirement income panacea for every consumer, but over the past five years, …. »
The South African retirement fund industry ranks among the largest 15 internationally, with some 8-million members and assets under management of close to R2-trillion. These statistics, from a recent study into pension scheme administration, were released in Johannesburg on 12 October at a one-day Retirement Reform Seminar, hosted jointly by the Association for Savings and …. »
The background Section 30 (2) (u) of the Pension Funds Act 1956 stipulates that a policy of insurance be effected to indemnify the pension fund against losses owing to the dishonesty or fraud of any of its officials or such other indemnification as the Registrar may allow. Other than this, there is very little clarity …. »
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