Pension fund baddies named

FSCA PUBLISHES LIST OF THOUSANDS OF COMPANIES NOT PAYING CONTRIBUTIONS

- Ina Oppereman

The Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) has published a new list of 2,330 employers with arrears pension fund contributions after receiving reports from 51 pension funds that 7,770 employers are not paying over pension fund contributions amounting to R5.2 billion.

Although this amount is only 0.2% of the R3.15 trillion in pension fund assets under FSCA supervision, it affects 31,000 pension fund members who receive no benefit payments. The list includes 149, or 58%, of the 257 municipalities in South Africa.

The names of the pension funds and employers are contained in the FSCA Communication 41. Not paying over pension fund contributions is a contravention of Section 13a of the Pension Funds Act (PFA), which prescribes how contributions and other benefits should be paid to a retirement fund.

Keabetswe Tsuene, senior analyst for retirement funds conduct supervision at FSCA, said at a media round table yesterday FSCA received reports of a total of 7,770 employers that contravened Section 13a of the PFA by 31 December 2023 from retirement funds supervised by the authority: