WEALTH WATCH
STEPHEN CRANSTON: Less than a year before new rules kick in to help retirement choices
March 2019 will usher in counselling and default products to safeguard pension nest eggs
The scariest financial milestone for most people has to be the moment of retirement. Never mind the emotional implications of no longer going to work, and the potential boredom. Under the defined contribution arrangement, you are largely on your own when it comes to choosing what kind of pension you will take — guaranteed level and living annuity, to mention just two of the choices. And you will have to choose between providers, whether from large insurance groups such as Old Mutual or Sanlam, or a range of unit trusts sold on the Allan Gray or Stanlib platforms. A small minority have financial advisers, but in my experience if you only meet an adviser at the point of retirement he is likely to put you into a cookie cutter, one size-fits-all product. And it’s not cheap; they can happily extract up to 1% of your fund value for questionable extra benefit. So I was pleased to see that Sanlam Employee Benefits (SEB) is offering free retirement benefits counselling to all its umbrella fu...
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