FAQ

The most common reasons that a fund is not able to pay out a benefit are: • Claim forms are not filled in correctly when the member leaves the fund. • Members haven't updated their contact information with the fund. When the member leaves the employer that he or she works for, the fund needs to contact them directly to arrange to pay the benefit. If the fund does not have the correct contact details, they can't take the necessary steps to pay the benefit. • Members have tax problems with SARS and their benefits can't be paid. • Members have not told their families about the fund's death benefits or updated their nomination forms with the correct contact details for their beneficiaries. If the member passes away, family members will not know that there is a benefit due to them. And if the fund has no contact details for the family, it makes it very difficult to process the claim. • Beneficiaries may not keep their contact details updated. Once a family member is due a payment of a death benefit from a fund, they need to keep their contact details up to date with the fund. • Members may not know that there is a benefit due to them when they leave their employer. Many working people don't know that they have a retirement fund, or in what situations the benefits of that fund will be paid to them. They may simply be unaware of the benefit due to them. • The fund is not able to trace members who have left. Where members have belonged to the same fund for many years, or the fund has been through many changes, the member information might be old and out of date. This makes tracing members to pay them their benefits very difficult. • The fund may have distributed a surplus or extra money. When deciding how to pay out a surplus, the fund often needs to go back in its history and include members who left many years before the surplus distribution date. The fund will probably not have the information they need to contact those members or to be able to trace them. Until those members can be found, they can't be paid.