You may be due unclaimed benefits if you are a dependant or are related to someone who has since passed away who contributed to a pension or provident fund while employed, but never received the benefits.

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If you contributed to a retirement fund during any period of employment and were not paid out the benefits, they could be part of the many billions of rands of unpaid assets still invested in a retirement fund or an unclaimed benefit fund.

You may also be due unclaimed benefits if you are a dependant or are related to someone who has since passed away who contributed to a pension or provident fund while employed, but never received the benefits.

You may also be a beneficiary of unclaimed benefits if you are a former member of a fund that distributed a surplus in the fund after you left that fund.

How unpaid retirement benefits are defined

Unclaimed retirement benefits are dealt with in terms of the Pension Funds Act.

The Pension Funds Act defines unclaimed benefits as those that have not been paid out two years after a member has left the fund.

Since 2019, regulations under the Act have obliged employer-sponsored retirement funds to keep your benefits invested should you leave the fund before retirement, unless you request the funds to be paid out or transferred to another fund.

Read more: What happens to my savings in an employer-sponsored fund if I leave my employer?

This is likely to make it more difficult for funds to identify exactly when retirement benefits are unclaimed, but in cases where a member has retired or died, and the member or his or her family cannot be contacted, benefits may be identified as unclaimed.

How unpaid benefits are preserved

Unclaimed benefits that have not been paid out more than two years after you have left the fund, can be held in the fund or transferred to an unclaimed benefits fund.

The fund will be able to deduct reasonable costs incurred for attempting to trace members from benefits identified as unclaimed.

At all times, however, you still have the right to claim the money.

What can you do to access your unclaimed benefit?

If you know the name of the pension fund to which you belonged or to which a family member belonged, you can contact the pension fund directly.

If you do not know how to contact the fund, you can contact the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA).

The FSCA can provide you with the contact details of the pension or provident fund to enable you to claim unclaimed retirement fund benefits. Visit the FSCA’s Unclaimed benefits page here or use its online search.

In order to claim from a fund you will need certain documents

If you are a former member:

• Any document that will show which pension or provident fund you belonged to, such as a wage or salary advice (pay slip) or your pension or provident fund benefit statement.
• The most recent document or correspondence you have from the pension or provident fund.
• Your ID number and contact details.

If you are the guardian, caregiver or dependant of a former member who has died:

• Any document that will show which pension or provident fund the member belonged to, such as a wage or salary advice (pay slip) or a pension or provident fund benefit statement.
• The most recent document or correspondence you have from the pension or provident fund.
• The ID number of the member.
• Any documents that can prove that you are the dependant or legal guardian or caregiver of the member, such as an unabridged birth certificate where a parent is claiming a benefit for a minor child.
• Proof of the member’s death or death certificate.
• Your ID number and contact details, as well as the details of anyone on whose behalf you are claiming.
• The marriage certificate if you are claiming as a spouse or proof of your long-term relationship with the member.

Tracing agents

If you are a member who has unclaimed assets or you are a beneficiary of unclaimed assets, you may be contacted by a tracing agent.

Tracing agents will ask you to send proof that you were a member or the dependant of a member.

Funds appoint tracing agents and pay their fees, so a legitimate tracing agent should not ask you to pay a fee.

A legitimate tracing agent will not be able to tell you how much you are due, as this information is held by the fund and the fund administrator. Only the fund administrator will tell you how much money is available.

If you want to check that the tracing agent is legitimate, contact the fund directly and ask if the fund appointed the agent.

What happens after you claim unpaid benefits

If you are a former member

If you left a fund or retired from a fund without taking benefits that you have now established are due to you, you can:

• Leave them invested until you retire;
• Transfer them to a new fund; (Read more: What happens to my savings in an employer-sponsored fund if I leave my employer?)or
• Withdraw them. (Read more: Why is withdrawing from my retirement fund a bad idea?)

If the member left the fund and then died

If you are a relative of a deceased member with unpaid benefits in a fund that you are claiming, be aware that there is a difference between unpaid benefits for members who left a fund and then died, and members who died while still a member.

In the case of a member who left a fund and then died, the executor of the estate should claim the benefits.

If a member died while still a member

In the case of a member who died while still a member, and for whom death benefits are unpaid, the Pension Funds Act needs to be complied with.

The Act requires trustees of the fund to identify anyone who was financially dependent on the member, consider anyone the member named as a beneficiary and to distribute the benefits equitably among the dependants and beneficiaries.

The trustees may have already identified you as someone to whom benefits should be distributed, or they may still need to investigate the family circumstances before they can pay out. (Read more: What happens to my retirement savings if I die before retirement?)

This article was first published on SmartAboutMoney.co.za, an initiative by the Association for Savings and Investment South Africa (Asisa).

For detailed fund information – including unit trust comparison tools, investment calculators and investment industry research - go to FundHub.co.za.

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