A call from a tracking agent from a retirement fund was all it took for *Mandisa to realise that she might have monies due to her from a mining company she had previously worked for that she had not claimed.
She is one of thousands of South Africans who might still not be aware of retirement savings due to them that they have not claimed for years.
According to the retirement fund sector, there is at least R42bn of unclaimed monies by pension fund members or their beneficiaries.
Mandisa from King Williams Town in the Eastern Cape said she was unaware that she could claim her retirement savings after leaving the company.
“I got a call from a tracking agent and they explained to me that I might have an unclaimed benefit from my previous employer as I was making contributions through my pension fund,” she said.
Mandisa also later discovered that her late father had nominated her as a beneficiary of his retirement savings, which had also not been claimed. “They asked me to submit certain documents, which I did, and little over a month I received my payout," she said.
She said it took a little over a month for her to get the monies due to her. She said she had experienced no challenges in getting her funds and was grateful to her fund administrator, Liberty.
According to Liberty’s Unclaimed Benefits Project lead, Kabelo van der Merwe, there is approximately R1,7bn in total unclaimed benefits that they are trying to trace. Their oldest case of unclaimed benefits is from 2009 when the fund was legally registered with the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA).
Van der Merwe said Liberty has introduced a search engine that the public can check to see if they have an unclaimed benefit due. Since the implementation of the unclaimed benefits search engine, approximately R1.2bn in asset value has been paid to over 14,000 members after valid claims were submitted to the relevant funds.
Who qualifies for Unclaimed Benefits?
Employees of companies who contributed as members of retirement funds during their employment and did not claim or receive their benefits upon terminating employment qualify for unclaimed benefits. This also applies to beneficiaries of former members who have not claimed or received their money for various reasons.
“A sizeable portion of Liberty’s former fund members live in remote rural areas, so finding them can be difficult,” said Van der Merwe. “Many others were registered with their respective pension funds using incorrect or incomplete details such as a date of birth instead of the full ID number or passport number, making them even harder to find. While the agents on the tracing team are slowly managing to track down these people, there are ways that the public can help speed up the process.
“We are asking the public to take a few minutes to check if they or their relatives have benefits owed to them so that we can start the process of paying them.”
According to Hugh Hacking, COO at Old Mutual Corporate, the company has just under 81,000 unclaimed benefits.
“This benefit has been submitted for tracing a number of times via three separate professional tracing agencies without success.”
Sanlam said it continually looks to resolve the number of unclaimed cases it has. It could not give figures of how many of its clients had not claimed their retirement benefits.
It urged its members to download and register on Sanlam’s MyRetirement App to view their member benefit statements and to track the growth of their retirement savings.
You can find out whether you are a beneficiary of unclaimed retirement funds by visiting the FSCA website, which has a built-in search engine to check if you are owed any benefits. Alternatively, for Liberty you can call the Liberty contact centre by dialling 011-408-7788 or visiting any Liberty offices or satellite branches nationwide.
For Old Mutual, an individual can find out whether they have an unclaimed benefit with Old Mutual by calling 0860-455-455 or 0860-337-777.
Additionally, members can SMS their ID number to the FSCA number at 30913.
* Not her real name
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