Africa-Press – South-Africa. More than half of umbrella fund members who took part in this year’s Sanlam Benchmark survey don’t believe that the National Treasury’s proposed two-bucket system is the right way to go.
Sanlam ran a poll on consumers belonging to the umbrella funds it administers. Just over half of those who responded were aware of the two-pot or two-bucket system. But 56% of those – which is roughly a quarter of those who responded – did not agree with it, saying it will likely lead to having insufficient savings at retirement.
Almost a third (29%) said they would still “definitely not” access the pot of savings that people will be allowed to access before retirement, should the law change. Another 20% said it would “probably not” touch the nest egg. Almost a third of those who responded (31%) would take the money in the touchable pot.
“A lot of the responses in the consumer study suggest a more conservative and financially conscious South African has emerged from the pandemic,” says the CEO of Sanlam Corporate, Kanyisa Mkhize.
After proposing this system in August, National Treasury published a discussion paper on the matter in December 2021.
EXPLAINER | What Treasury’s discussion paper on accessing part of retirement saving proposes
In SA, most retirement fund members already access their savings before retirement – when they change jobs or get retrenched. Sanlam pointed out that, even more alarmingly, there are instances when people resign solely to access their retirement savings.
Treasury hopes that by allowing people to access some of their retirement savings when facing severe financial hardships, people won’t be tempted to cash out their money at every chance they get.
Sanlam said that, when discussing the investment impact with asset consultants, nine out of 15 indicated that they believed a retirement fund should change its investment strategy to cater for the access pot. That means investing in more liquid assets instead of tying all the money on long-term investments like infrastructure.
“However, one would need to balance this with possibly lower investment returns over the long term. For those members with no intention of touching their access pot, there seems little reason to differentiate the investment strategy between the retirement and access pots,” said Sanlam Corporate.
But whatever the final product will look like after the public consultation process, Sanlam said those in the industry do not believe that implementing the two-pot system by March 2023 is realistic. They believe that there’s still an enormous amount of work to be done first.
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