Institute of Retirement Africa Best Practices Industry Awards winners

<strong>By: The Institute of Retirement Funds Africa (IRFA) </strong>

The Institute of Retirement Funds Africa (IRFA) industry awards and recognition programme has evolved considerably since its initial inception as a “Communication Challenge” some 31 years ago, into a robust and respected programme which seeks to identify and promote best practices and standards in retirement fund governance, transformation, investment practices, stakeholder engagement, trustee development and financial management and reporting. Awards were handed out at a well attended gala banquet held at the Wanderers Club in Johannesburg on the 23rd January

IRFA President Wayne Hiller Van Rensburg notes the IRFA has established the Best Practice Industry Awards (BPIA) to encourage the boards of retirement funds to continuously strive to improve the performance of those funds and to celebrate excellence in the performance of funds in relation to particular categories of their conduct of fund business. There are various ways in which participation in the BPIA programme may be beneficial to funds and their members. In particular, participation requires a fund to subject its performance to self-assessment and stimulates learning and creativity in engaging in the conduct on which the fund’s performance will be assessed for the purposes of the programme. It should also enhance member confidence in the board of a fund because it demonstrates the board’s willingness to subject aspects of the fund’s conduct of business to independent evaluation.

The programme attracts entrants from a wide range of retirement funds and is benchmarked extensively against local, regional and international programmes of this nature. One of the core objectives of the programme is to identify those practices which should set the standard for the sector and IRFA believes that by bringing these into the public domain we are promoting good practices and the body of knowledge for the ultimate benefit of the member of the retirement funds. The objective of the programme has never been commercial and our judges and moderators volunteer their time and expertise at no cost. For many years we have collaborated with regulators and they have been core partners in terms of lending guidance and judging expertise which has enabled us to develop an inclusive programme and entries continue to show learnings and practices surfaced by our awards programme.

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