My mother used to work at large company but was dismissed decades ago. Can she claim a pension from them?

The long answer

Thank you for your email asking how you can claim your mother’s unclaimed pension benefits, after being dismissed from Clover SA in 1986.

A pension fund has different kinds of benefits. These include:

Withdrawal benefits – paid to workers who resign or are dismissed
Retirement benefits – paid to workers when they retire
Insured benefits – paid to a worker who is disabled and benefits paid to the dependants of a worker who dies while still employed.

Whether withdrawal benefits are only your mother’s contributions, or include the employer’s contributions, would depend on the rules of the Clover SA Pension Fund.

You will need to find out if her benefits are still being kept in an unclaimed benefit fund. This is a fund which preserves the unpaid benefits which have not been claimed when the fund cannot trace the member to advise them that they should claim their benefits. The benefits are put into an unclaimed benefit fund if they have not been claimed two years after the member has left their work.

There is a lot of anger at the moment about unclaimed benefits, because the pension funds employ private companies to administer the unclaimed benefit funds which are supposed to trace the members who have not claimed benefits. The problem is that if people do claim their benefits, those private companies stand to lose the fees they are paid, so it is not in their interests to look too hard. Currently there are millions of rands in unclaimed benefits.

It is also possible that under the Clover SA Pension Fund rules, your mother’s benefits have prescribed, since they have not been claimed for so many years. This means that she may have forfeited her right to the benefits. But because there is so much money that has not been claimed for all sorts of reasons, the Pension Funds Adjudicator says that she has asked the pension funds not to simply rule that the funds have been prescribed because of a delay of longer than three years, but to investigate the reasons for the delay. If she receives a complaint about unpaid benefits, her office will always investigate whether there were valid reasons for the delay. But if the fund finds that there were no valid reasons for delay and that the benefits have prescribed due to delay in claiming them, the Pension Funds Adjudicator says she has no power to change their decision.

Perhaps the first thing to do is to contact the Clover SA Pension Fund with all your mother’s details – name/s, ID number, when she was employed, – and ask them to find out whether her benefits can still be claimed.

There is also a searchable “unclaimed benefits” data base set up by the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FCSA) at www.fsca.co.za. You would have to input basic information like her name, date of birth and ID number, the name of the fund, the employer name. If the search engine finds a match, it will give you the name of the pension fund. From there you would still have to apply to the fund.

You can also email the FCSA at Pensions.UBQuery@FSCA.co.za, or telephone them at 0800 20 3722 (toll-free).
If you are not satisfied with the decision of the pension fund, you can complain to the Pensions Fund Adjudicator at this call centre number, 086 066 2837, or email her at enquiries@pfa.org.za. But you first need to submit a complaint to the pension fund itself and it has 30 days to reply to you. If they don’t reply or you are not satisfied with the reply, you can complain to the Pensions Fund Adjudicator, including your letter to the pension fund and their reply. The Adjudicator then gives the pension fund 30 days to reply. The Adjudicator then looks at the facts and decides who is right. It can take up to 15 months to get the Pension Adjudicator’s decision as there is a long waiting list.