A tougher era may be dawning for employers failing to pay retirement-fund contributions, with the Pension Fund Adjudicator signalling that it intends to make fuller use of its enforcement powers.
Source: Supplied. Office of the Pension Fund Adjudicator advocate Lebogang Mogashoa.
The warning comes as unpaid contributions have reached R8.3bn, according to the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA), with local government accounting for about R1.7bn.
Non-payment is also at the heart of the complaints reaching the Office of the Pension Fund Adjudicator (Opfa), accounting for 51% of all complaints received during the last financial year.
“This is a big risk to the generation of positive outcomes for members,” noted Opfa advocate Lebogang Mogashoa. He said the Opfa had to make the “maximum use” of the resources and authority given to it by legislation to deal with this non-payment. This included issuing orders against employers and/or responsible persons requiring payment. There was a false perception that the Opfa did not have the power to issue orders which often prompted funds to resort to the courts.
Tougher enforcement ahead
Another power provided to the Opfa by the Pensions Fund Act was its ability to proactively join any respondent in its proceedings and possibly issue an order against them. This applied not only to complaints by retirement funds but also by individuals.
“This is the direction of travel. This is where we want to go,” Mogashoa said. He believed the use of these powers by the Opfa would prompt a shift in behaviour. The act also allowed the office to issue subpoenas and draft guidelines for this were posted on its website for comment. This would address the problem of employers and responsible persons often not responding to complaints.
Mogashoa noted that the five-year average of complaints received by the Opfa was 10,119 per financial year, with a record 13,041 having been received in the 2025/26 financial year. In the year to date to end-August 2026, 5,059 complaints had been received, a 13% reduction compared with the same period in the previous financial year when 5,797 complaints were received.
Gauteng, KwaZulu Natal and Western Cape generated the most complaints.
Partnership over policing
Mogashoa stressed that the Opfa wanted to achieve the same things as retirement-fund administrators and trustees, namely to achieve positive outcomes and security in retirement for members. This was made difficult by the increasing complexity of legislation and regulations which was putting pressure on the Opfa's ability to work with industry to achieve this.
The adjudicator, he added, was not a police officer for the industry but a value co-creator, providing effective redress for members. It had to be acknowledged that the mere fact that there was a complaint meant that something had gone wrong and had to be addressed through a partnership between the industry and the Opfa.
Mogashoa acknowledged that complainants wanted their disputes resolved speedily. Most were resolved by the office in six months but this “is quite frankly still too long. We need to prioritise resolving complaints as quickly as possible".
But he said the industry also needed to try to settle disputes instead of just waiting for a ruling by the Opfa.
Another initiative which he outlined was the use of technology to better serve the industry, replacing legacy processes and systems to make them more effective and to improve turnaround times. Artificial intelligence will also be used to process complaints.
