FROM ACCESS TO AGENCY
Henré Prinsloo, Head of Employee Benefits and Actuarial Consulting
For years, financial services prioritised access. However, true financial success depends more on consistent decision quality than on simply what products are in a portfolio.
Inconsistent outcomes are often due to limited early-stage engagement. Many young workers view retirement and related planning as unimportant, missing crucial decisions that shape ther future. Early portfolio choices have lasting effects, and treating retirement contributions casually limits long- term success.
The Two-Pot retirement system prevents South Africans from exhausting their savings when changing jobs. Annual withdrawals are permitted, and increased engagement has led many to view their benefit statements for the first time.
Throughout a lifetime, a consumer may accumulate a retirement fund from one employer, a life policy from a broker and a discretionary savings account through a banking app. Viewing these accounts separately leads to gaps, causing over-indebtedness or uneven insurance coverage. True financial wellness requires a move away from product pushing towards structured advice.
Digital tools help with fast comparisons, but human conversations remain essential for understanding the emotional and cultural sides of money. We should move from quick solutions to ongoing partnerships that improve benefits. Ultimately, a product is simply a tool.
A MORE INCLUSIVE ECONOMY
Mareli Mans, Head of FundsAtWork and GI Product and Pricing
Risk was once seen as a simple, static assessment based on fixed categories and past data. Today, risk changes with advances in medicine, individual actions and environmental factors. Insurance models must adapt to these real-world dynamics instead of relying on outdated classifications. Advances in underwriting are closing the gap between medical innovation and insurance logic.
Momentum Corporate recently announced a significant advancement in group insurance underwriting by effectively removing the insurance ceiling for HIV-positive employees. Healthy HIV-positive individuals can now access full group risk protection including Death, Disability and Income Protection benefits.
Aligning insurance with modern medicine by using proactive chronic disease management allows underwriting to reward managed health, opening new financial security options. Employers benefit from a more inclusive benefits approach that promotes equality.
The need to rethink risk extends into environmental and behavioural frontiers. In South Africa, dynamic risks, ranging from changing road conditions to extreme weather events, require underwriting models to take a proactive stance. These advances allow us to respond to what is happening in real-time.
Responsive insurance views risk as a partnership. By embracing underwriting advances that incorporate real-world health outcomes, we are strengthening the safety net for thousands of households. In an increasingly uncertain economic environment, ensuring that insurance products reflect a resilient, modern South Africa is both a business and social imperative.
BEYOND R100-BILLION
Nashalin Portrag, Head of FundsAtWork
Scale drives greater accountability in the retirement industry and brings benefits like stronger buying power, lower costs and digital investments. Yet, these gains vanish if complexity undermines control. Growth introduces new layers that may weaken decisions and operations. To avoid complacency, large funds need diverse governance representing members’ backgrounds for accountability.
To manage this complexity, governance must shift from being merely compliance-driven to being outcome-driven. While strong principles are evergreen, the application of those principles must become more specialised as a fund evolves.
For a fund of this magnitude, independent oversight is non- negotiable. External perspectives inject a necessary challenge to institutional momentum. This independence ensures that we avoid the assumption that past performance guarantees future results.
A blind spot in large retirement funds is a lack of focus on how decisions impact members. If governance structures don’t translate into frictionless experiences for members trying to understand their benefits, these structures have failed. Simplicity at member-level is a governance choice, not an operational constraint. Retirement funding is complex; our job is to balance that sophistication with clarity. This means using our scale to provide benefits, lower friction and clearer choices, ensuring that the economies of scale we unlock are passed directly to the member.
Trust is a fragile commodity. It is earned through consistent outcomes and transparent alignment of interests. Modern trustees must be comfortable with complexity but intolerant of opacity. They must be willing to ask difficult questions and prioritise long-term interests when short-term pressures arise.
Industry consolidation raises challenges for the retirement system. Trustees, advisers and regulators should proactively ensure inclusive outcomes, while funds must focus on their purpose and use scale to empower members. Financial wellness remains the key metric.
THE MOMENT OF TRUTH
Ciske Priem, Head: Client Engagement and Integration
In the financial journey of a retirement fund member, the point of payout is the ultimate moment of truth. Whether it’s a withdrawal due to the new Two-Pot retirement system or a benefit claim at retirement, these touchpoints are where theoretical savings meet the hard reality of immediate need.
For many South Africans, their retirement fund is their only financial asset. However, many people struggle to link today’s withdrawal with consequences in the future.
When members engage with us to access their savings component under Two-Pot, it’s usually due to financial strain. Without intervention, the default choice is often to prioritise immediate gratification. Our role as administrators is to transform a transactional moment into an educational one.
Although it was once thought that members might struggle with digital channels, 98% of Two-Pot claims were made online via WhatsApp and member portals, showing that South Africans are more digitally adept than expected. For retirement fund administrators, this shift allows real-time communication and
timely digital nudges when members consider withdrawals. Member behaviour is fundamentally altered through the right interventions at the point of payout. Administration data allows us to move beyond generic messages to personalised projections.
By enabling projection statements, we show members exactly what a R10 000 withdrawal today will cost them at age 65. When members see the tangible impact, including the tax implications of their choice, they often opt to preserve their funds.
Since September 2024, members have paid closer attention to their balances and benefits, initially focusing on withdrawals but ultimately becoming more engaged in managing their finances.
The path forward involves moving education from the point of retirement to every point of contact; providing simple information and using withdrawal patterns to build better-suited products, such as cost-effective in-fund annuities.
The gap between intended and actual outcomes can be closed. By leveraging digital tools and administration data, we guide members to see that their retirement fund is not just a monthly cost, but a critical tool for future survival.
FROM BENEFITS TO DECISIONS
Siyasanga Kashe, Executive: Member Solutions
In the world of retirement funds, well-designed benefit structures often fail to translate into meaningful financial outcomes. The missing link is not the product’s quality, but the quality of the engagement. Without a human-centred strategy that accounts for the psychological and financial pressures members face, benefits remain abstract concepts rather than tools for stability. Complexity, unclear language and intricate designs make benefits inaccessible, especially when communication isn’t in the member’s native language. Trust issues and too many choices cause decision paralysis.
Financial stress narrows an individual’s focus to immediate survival. During periods of pressure, members prioritise their available cash by lowering contributions or accessing retirement savings early without grasping the long-term impact.
Momentum focuses on proactive services such as retirement benefit counselling and alternative financial solutions, including pension-backed home loans and emergency savings.
By March 2026, counselling coverage for members using the Smart Move digital offboarding tool reached 95.1%. Manual processes remain challenging, as some members withdraw savings before receiving advice. We are working to ensure every member gets guidance prior to making irreversible decisions.
Members who resigned or withdrew digitally received monthly counselling from July 2025 to March 2026. Preservation values hit R1.1-billion year-to-date, exceeding the annual goal by 8%. Compared to last year, preservation grew 27%, increasing from R88-million in March 2025 to R111-million in March 2026. The Two-Pot rule contributed to these outcomes.
Proactive education is needed to prevent long-term fund leakage. More members are now choosing to preserve their funds after financial education. Ultimately, protection is a proof of care. By shifting from a benefits-led approach to a member-led engagement strategy, we can ensure that South Africans don’t just have benefits on paper but have genuine financial security in practice.
FROM SAVINGS TO SUSTAINABILITY
Hugh Hacking, Head of Structured Investments and Annuities
Moving from consistently saving to sustainable spending in retirement is a crucial financial change. The main concern is ensuring that your capital lasts and provides an inflation-protected income throughout retirement.
At retirement, savings are typically converted into a life annuity – an insurance contract where you pay a lump sum to an insurer for guaranteed lifetime income. This removes the risk of outliving your money but limits flexibility, as you usually can’t change payments or access your capital.
Living annuities are investment-linked products where your capital remains invested in the markets. You decide how much to draw down each year within regulatory limits of 2.5% to 17.5%. The benefit is flexibility and the potential for capital growth. Crucially, any residual capital upon your death can be left to beneficiaries. The trade-off is that you carry the risk. If you draw down too much too early, you may deplete your capital entirely.
Blended solutions have emerged in response to changing markets and regulations. The hybrid model splits savings between a guaranteed life annuity for essential costs and a living annuity for lifestyle spending. Securing basic expenses with guaranteed income provides a financial safety net.
There are several factors that will influence a retiree’s decision-making process. The first factor to consider is market volatility and the sequence of returns risk. What the market does in the first few years of your retirement has a disproportionate impact on a living annuity. A market downturn early on, combined with high drawdowns, can hollow out your capital. Blending in a guaranteed component mitigates this danger.
Second is inflation protection. Not all life annuities are equal. A level annuity pays the same amount forever, meaning your purchasing power halves every few years. Consider escalating annuities, linked to CPI or with-profit structures, that aim to grow your income alongside the cost of living.
Third is the legacy trap. Many retirees choose living annuities just to provide inheritances for their children. However, the primary purpose of retirement savings is to fund your life.
New regulations and product innovations make integration easier, but they need active management and professional modelling. Working with a financial adviser to stress-test your plan helps ensure resilience. By combining guaranteed and investment-linked solutions, you can build a retirement that is both durable and rewarding.
