Professor John Murphy, appointed pension funds adjudicator from January next year, has been inundated with calls from disgruntled pensioners, following a report in Personal Finance on his appointment.
Although he will only be able to hear and rule on disputes from January, his willingness to accept written complaints from the beginning of November has resulted in a flood of complaints.
Murphy says he is expecting a the number of complaints from pension fund members to range between 1200 to 1500 a year.
Andre Swanepoel, deputy registrar of pensions at the FSB says Murphy's budget and service agreement were approved by the FSB this week which means that he is now in a position to make arrangements for setting up his office.
"I had hoped that by November 1 these things could have been finalised. I could then have leased offices and appointed an administrator, so that people could start sending complaints, and I could process them almost immediately when I started in January."
Part of the delay has been the uncertainty about where to locate the office and some administrative delays on the part of the FSB.
But Murphy told Personal Finance this week, that the office for the pensions adjudicator would be located in Cape Town for the first two years. Following approval of his budget this week, he is looking for office accommodation.
After the two years, it will be reviewed to see if Murphy has been able to service pension fund members adequately from the Mother City.
Swanepoel emphasised that according to the law you can only approach the pensions adjudicator once you have gone through a dispute resolution process with your pension fund.
The post of pension fund adjudicator is to be funded by a levy on pension funds which will be administered by the FSB. However, the adjudicator will be independent of the FSB and other organisations.
Murphy will have jurisdiction over a R400 billion pension fund industry, including all funds registered under the Pension Funds Act both defined benefit and defined contribution, pension and provident funds, but excluding bargaining council funds not registered under the Act, public sector and certain parastatal retirement funds.
He is currently head of the Department of Public Law at the University of the Western Cape and is a senior commissioner of the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA), which deals with labour disputes. He is also an arbitrator for the Independent Mediation Service of SA (IMSSA).