Alexander Forbes feels fallout of ‘missing’ pension billions
When the Financial Services Board cancelled dormant retirement funds, it transferred beneficiaries’ money into ‘unclaimed benefit funds’. However, beneficiaries say it’s not unclaimed but unpaid
As Alexander Forbes accepted six boxes of documents from representatives of the Unpaid Benefits Campaign (UBC) last month, Douglas Maila shouted: "I have saved enough to retire peacefully. But now I will turn in my grave because I will die in poverty."Maila is one of millions of beneficiaries — former retirement fund contributors or the dependants of deceased contributors — who have been struggling to get the money they saved for retirement through their working lives.Between 2007 and 2013, the Financial Services Board (now the Financial Sector Conduct Authority, or FSCA) cancelled dormant retirement funds, transferring beneficiaries’ money — estimated by the FSCA to be R42bn and affecting 4-million beneficiaries — into "unclaimed benefit funds" administered by, among others, Alexander Forbes.Maila and other members of the UBC dispute the "unclaimed" tag; they suggest these funds are simply "unpaid". So in mid-October, the campaign went to present the "untraceable" beneficiaries of...
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