July 2019

19Jul

Risk-aversion among pension schemes a recipe for poverty

It is a known fact that pension funds, in their quest to deliver returns that will maintain pre-retirement standard of living for retirees, are faced with trilemma in their asset allocation—namely profitability, liquidity and security. Profitability is all about investing to achieve highest returns, liquidity rotates around the ability to answer to liabilities as at and when they fall due and security entails capital preservation. In other words, it is a risk-reward balancing act. However, there is also a...

July 19, 2019
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19Jul

Africa. Why Rotich locked up Sh385bn pension cash for workers below 50 years

The Retirement Benefits Authority (RBA) has come out to defend a legal amendment that will see more than Sh385 billion of workers’ pension savings made inaccessible to those below 50 years. Treasury Secretary Henry Rotich has, through a legal notice, amended pension rules effectively cutting out workers’ access to their employers’ portion of savings before clocking the official retirement age of 50. “Regulation 19 of the Principal Regulations is amended in paragraph (5) by deleting the words “and fifty...

July 19, 2019
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17Jul

Africa. Treasury calls for pensions funding of infrastructure

The Treasury has joined a growing chorus for pension schemes to pool funds for big-ticket infrastructure projects to ease overreliance on expensive debt. Mr Stanley Kamau, the acting director-general for Public Investments and Portfolio Management at the Treasury, said the Sh1 trillion pension industry can help plug part of the country’s infrastructure finance gap. Kenya’s deficit in projects such as roads, power plants and lines, bridges, water and houses is conservatively estimated at more than Sh400 billion a year....

July 17, 2019
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17Jul

Africa. Treasury bars early access to pension money

You will no longer be able to access pension contributions from your employer until retirement. In another flip-flop of the pension regulations, the National Treasury has reversed regulations that had allowed employees to withdraw up to half of pension contributions by their employers before they attained retirement age. LONG-TERM The policy, which was popular for employees in the private sector, had caused a major discomfort in the pension industry which had come to be accustomed to staying with retirement...

July 17, 2019
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11Jul

Africa. Efforts intensify on drafting social protection policy

The Constitution of Namibia, Article 95, requires the state to actively promote as well as maintain the welfare of people and create equal opportunities. Zephania Kameeta, Minister of Poverty Eradication and Social Welfare this when officially opening a regional consultative workshop on the Social Protection Policy Draft at Keetmanshoop earlier this week. The parliamentarian then explained that this draft aims specifically to address vulnerabilities, tackle social exclusion and eradicate poverty. He continued by referring to the Namibian Constitution...

July 11, 2019
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09Jul

Africa. Need for pension harmonization

In a press release dated July 5, 2019, the government of Sierra Leone through the Financial Secretary announced that out of a total sum of approximately 67 Billion Leones (SLL 66,830,114,540.00) owed as pensions to 371 former political government employees - including the former president, vice-presidents, former ministers and deputies, ambassadors and deputies, information and cultural Attachés, heads of agencies and departments - a fifty percent payment had been effected to the above erstwhile officials as pensions and gratuities,...

July 9, 2019
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03Jul

Leveraging Switch Technology to Increase Pension Coverage to Informal Sector Workers. Workshop Live Coverage

We are doing a live coverage of the workshop "Leveraging Switch Technology to Increase Pension Coverage to Informal Sector Workers”, in Ghana, organized by this country's National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA) and The World Bank. During the initial remarks, Mr. Hayford Attah Krufi, NPRA's CEO, said that “NPRA has seen the opportunity for the industry to embrace the technological environment to facilitate membership enrolment and contributions”. Pierre Laporte, Country Director of Ghana for The World Bank continued by celebrating Ghana's engaged regulator, involved informal-sector representatives &...

July 3, 2019
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May 2019

21May

Beyond mobile payments: Going up the value chain of fintech in Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa has become the global leader in mobile money adoption, usage, and innovation. The challenge now is to go beyond the success in payments to meet the unmet demand in the region for other, underdeveloped financial services that can facilitate the digitalization of other segments of the economy. In a new report, my colleagues and I take a closer look at the policy challenges that need to be addressed to go up the value chain of financial technology (fintech)...

May 21, 2019
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10May

Aging in Sub-Saharan Africa: Recommendations for Furthering Research (English Edition)

By por National Research Council, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, Committee on Population, Panel on Policy Research and Data Needs to Meet the Challenge of Aging in Africa In sub-Saharan Africa, older people make up a relatively small fraction of the total population and are supported primarily by family and other kinship networks. They have traditionally been viewed as repositories of information and wisdom, and are critical pillars of the community but as the HIV/AIDS pandemic...

May 10, 2019
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April 2019

19Apr

Africa’s Biggest Fund Manager Is Said to Court Banker as CEO

Africa’s largest fund manager is said to be considering financial services executive Kennedy Bungane to head the institution, according to people familiar with the matter. Responsible for most South African government workers’ pension funds, the Public Investment Corp. is being probed over allegations of wrongdoing that are currently a subject of a judicial commission of inquiry and resulted in a host of senior departures, including that of Chief Executive Officer Dan Matjila. The PIC, which manages more than 2 trillion rand...

April 19, 2019
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