Have you checked that your employer is up to date with your retirement fund contributions?
Not only are employers in arrears with their own contributions, but money already deducted from your salary may be sitting with your employer.
The latest report of the Registrar of Pensions, Rick Cottrell, shows that employers are hanging onto more than R730 million of contributions due to self-administered retirement funds.
This figure includes more than R270 million collected by employers but not yet been paid to the retirement fund.
Employers also owe more than R450 million for their own contributions.
An amount of R4 million is outstanding by employers for past service contributions.
Also disconcerting is that the amount outstanding from one financial year to the next has increased by about R70 million.
The report shows that contributions outstanding for the 1995 financial year totalled more than R660 million compared with about R730 million for 1996.
Cottrell also raised the issue of employers who do not pay contributions to retirement funds within the required period of seven days and expressed concern at the level of arrears in some funds.
But amendments to existing legislation are in the pipeline which will help you to do something about the failure of your employer to pay over contributions to your retirement fund.
Amendments to the Pension Funds Act will beef up reporting procedures by retirement funds and will provide for penalty interest on outstanding amounts.
While existing legislation does make it an offence for employers to hang onto contributions which are due to retirement funds, it relies on the already overloaded justice system to rectify the matter.
Renier Botha, pensions specialist of the Financial Services Board, says the amendments deal specifically with who must report to whom within specified times on the status of retirement funds.
For example, if contributions are more than two months in arrears this must be reported to the trustees who will be obliged to inform members.
"We believe if members know about it they will put pressure on their employers to make sure that the contributions are paid," he says.
The amount of penalty interest is still under debate, but the latest draft legislation makes provision for a 30 percent penalty interest on outstanding amounts.
"We want to discourage employers from hanging onto the money," says Botha.
A third leg of the amendments will oblige employers to provide proper information about members to retirement funds so that the funds can keep up to date records on arrear contributions and properly reconcile their records.
The new legislation could be effective from January next year.