On 21 July 2024, President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the Pension Funds Amendment Bill (PFAB) into law, marking an important milestone in South Africa's retirement reform. This new legislation paves the way for the two-pot retirement system, which aims to...
Attending industry conferences can be a game changer for professionals across various fields. These events offer a unique blend of learning, networking, and personal growth opportunities. Industry conferences bring together professionals, experts and...
At the early stages of the Covid-19 lockdowns, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in June 2020, published a paper called “Retirement savings in the time of COVID-19”. It identified amongst some of the main challenges arising...
Disclaimer. Please note that this article uses very broad generalisation of a painted scenario for the purpose of dramatic effect. Individuals are all different and different circumstances will be relevant to every individual fund, member or service provider....
In previous articles, we explored strategies to safeguard retirement funds against failure, drawing insights from corporate failures and independent non-executive (NED) remuneration practices to identify transferrable learnings for retirement funds. In this...
Many retirement funds, including commercial umbrella funds, maintain a life-cycle investment strategy. Trustees carefully consider the investment strategy, with input from experts in the field. These experts design sophisticated investment strategies, often...
The world of retirement fund servicing is undergoing a significant transformation, thanks to the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistants. Fund secretaries and employee benefits consultants to retirement funds can now leverage AI to streamline...
A recent and interesting industry trend is that of death benefits being placed into beneficiary funds for elderly parents of deceased retirement fund members. This is notable because beneficiary funds have since their inception been primarily seen as a...
With both the Pension Funds Amendment Bill and the Revenue Laws Amendment Bill having been passed by the National Treasury, the President must sign the bills into law. However, a few steps remain in finalising the implementation of the Two Component system,...
Everybody loves tax – not! Unfortunately, in South Africa taxation is unavoidable and very high. It is also very complicated. The two-pot system has introduced a new way to tax our retirement funds. Any withdrawal from your savings pots will be based on...