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The Pension Fund Adjudicator, advocate Lebogang Mogashoa, has sounded the alarm that up to half the complaints his office has received in the past year relate to failure by employers to pay member contributions over to their employees.Magoshoa was addressing the Institute of Retirement Funds Africa (IRFA) Conference in Cape Town. He acknowledged complainants wanted their disputes resolved speedily, but said most complaints were resolved by the office in six months. “This is a big risk to the generation of positive outcomes for members. It is quite frankly still too long. We need to prioritise resolving complaints as quickly as possible.” He told IRFA 2026 51% of all complaints submitted to the Office of the Pension Fund Adjudicator (OPFA) in the past financial year related to the non-payment of contributions by employers. He said the five-year average of complaints received by the OPFA was 10,119 per financial year, with a record 13,041 received in the 2025/26 financial year. “The office of the Pension Funds Adjudicator can only issue the orders it does against employers, forcing them to honour their obligations. But the funds, through their boards of trustees, need to do more and much earlier as they are aware of the non-compliance.— Muvhango Lukhaimane, former Pension Funds Adjudicator In the year to date to end-August 2026, 5,059 complaints had been received, a 13% reduction compared with the same period in the previous financial year when 5,797 complaints were received, with Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape generating the most complaints.The Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) reported a few months ago R8.3bn had not been paid over to retirement funds by employers. Local government was responsible for about R1.7bn of the outstanding contributions.Mogashoa stressed the OPFA wants to achieve the same things as retirement fund administrators and trustees, namely positive outcomes and security in retirement for members.Former Pension Funds Adjudicator Muvhango Lukhaimane told TimesLIVE during her tenure that compliance among employers with the payment of pension fund contributions remained a challenge in sectors including the private security sector, which required more support from funds.“The office of the Pension Funds Adjudicator can only issue the orders it does against employers, forcing them to honour their obligations. But the funds, through their boards of trustees, need to do more and much earlier as they are aware of the non-compliance.“A significant amount of relief we grant to complainants is partial as a portion of their claim might have prescribed, as retirement fund contributions prescribe within three years just like any money debt.”She said within the industry itself, there remain complexities in the compliance space. For instance, she said, occupational retirement funds, because of their compulsory nature, tend to provide more accurate statistics on contributions.Business Times
