FAIRHEADS OFFERS TRACING SERVICE TO RETIREMENT FUNDS
FAIRHEADS Benefit Services, an administrator of beneficiary funds and umbrella trusts, now offers tracing services – which involve tracing missing beneficiaries – to the broader retirement fund industry. Nikki Jacobs, operations manager at Fairheads, says the tracing service is a logical progression from the tracing it has always done as part of its administration work. “Our fiduciary duty is to keep in touch with members or beneficiaries. It often happens that people change address or phone numbers and then we have gone out of our way to trace them, acting on a mandate from the board of trustees of the fund in question,” she says. “We go beyond the traditional ways of finding members, having gained a solid understanding of the community and employer networks. In addition to our own field agents, we are sourcing appropriately placed providers, including small, often singleperson micro-enterprises, in the communities where they live. This is a win-win solution: tracing members and creating jobs,” Jacobs says. | Supplied
MORE THAN a month after Finance Minister Tito Mboweni said that pensioners with living annuities would temporarily be able to adjust their drawdown rates during the Covid-19 crisis, the National Treasury has given the go-ahead for annuitants to make the changes with their providers.
In covering the minister’s announcement, Personal Finance incorrectly stated that the measures would be effective immediately (“Living annuitants can up drawdown immediately”, Personal Finance, May 2). However, on approaching their annuity providers, readers found this not to be the case. In fact, it has taken six weeks for the measures to take effect.
Under normal circumstances, pensioners with living annuities may change their annual drawdown rate – the percentage of their capital they can withdraw annually as income, which can be paid out monthly – once a year, typically on the anniversary of the inception of the policy. The rate they choose must be in the 2.5% to 17.5% range, but in order for the annuity to be sustainable, the rate needs to be towards the lower end of this range.
This week, the Treasury amended