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BusinessLive reports that poor governance within funds and administrators was the reason behind most complaints to the pension funds adjudicator in the past year.
In releasing her office’s 2017-2018 annual report, Adjudicator Muvhango Lukhaimane said that fund members had been forced to complain after things that should have been dealt with were left hanging, resulting in thousands of complaints and stretching resources at her office. “Fund members are forced to approach the [adjudicator] on a myriad of issues that should be attended to by funds in the ordinary course of business,” Lukhaimane stated. The most common problems were non-payment or late payment of contributions by employers, and the funds and administrators not paying out benefits. An employer withholding payments to a fund was not a technical issue, but theft of a member’s pension, Lukhaimane pointed out. She noted that 2017-2018 had been particularly challenging in that 794 complaints had been received in the year, which had been a record high. Of the total complaints, 4,405 were determined, 2,571 were found to be out of jurisdiction, and 1,462 were settled; 367 complaints were closed for various reasons. Lukhaimane said her office did its best to finalise complaints expeditiously, despite the fact that the funds that generated the largest number of complaints took, on average, 90 days to file responses instead of the stipulated 30-day period.
- Read the full original report by Devlin Brown at BusinessLive
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