South Africa is sitting with R42 billion in unclaimed pensions – here’s how to search if you are a beneficiary

Almost 4.8 million South Africans have unclaimed pension benefits, with the total pension pot worth an estimated R42 billion, says Kabelo van der Merwe, project lead of Unclaimed Benefits at Liberty.

In an interview with Cape Talk, van der Merwe said that the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) has established a search function on its website to check if you are the beneficiary of an unclaimed benefit.

She said that the search function allows you to type in the name of the person who has passed without anybody claiming the benefit.

“The lack of people coming is vastly because of a lack of knowledge and being unaware of the different avenues that need to be followed for one to claim their proceeds,” van der Merwe said.

“We encourage families to have open discussions about money and investments. Whatever money you have, let your family know where it is should an eventuality happen.”

How to search

The registrar of Pension funds provides a central database on the FSCA website to assist members of the public to ascertain through the search engine if there are any unclaimed benefits due to them.

An enquirer will be required to input basic information onto the unclaimed benefits search engine, such as a person’s name, surname, identification number, fund name,  and name of employer.

On a successful match, the enquirer will be provided with the contact detail of the fund and/or administrator, the FSCA said,

The FSCA said it can only assist by providing the contact details of the relevant fund and/or administrator where after the enquirer will have to contact the fund directly and then follow the normal claims process of a fund to prove a valid claim.

Alternatively, the following search channels can be used to search for unclaimed benefits:

Read: Here’s what you could buy for R100 in South Africa 30 and 60 years ago