Trustees of your retirement fund will soon be able to compare one fund manager with another much more easily when the Fund Managers' Association (FMASA) adopts new performance standards.
Carmen Maynard, the association's chair, says that at its annual general meeting this month, FMASA endorsed performance standards which are more accessible and transparent than the best elsewhere in the world.
Fund managers who are members of the association must adhere to these standards when they publish statistics of performance of the assets they manage.
"The idea is that performance of different fund managers should be measured off the same platform," Maynard says.
"Until now a trustee couldn't really work out how well each manager had performed."
A draft of the standards is being circulated. Once the rules are adopted, the industry itself will enforce them.
"There is enough competition between fund managers to be sure that if one of them steps out of line, the others will notice."
The adoption of performance standards will make South Africa "leader of the pack" in the world, ahead even of practice in the United States.
FMASA members number 96 out of the 140 fund managers in the country. The association brings together retirement funds, unit trusts and life assurance companies.