LETTER: Cash by March is a dangerous fantasy

Your editorial opinion refers (“Care needed over introduction of two-pot retirement system”, November 24). Retirement funds will have to amend their rules to put the new “two-pot” regime in place.

There is a recent Constitutional Court judgment that funds may not give effect to rule amendments before these have been approved by the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA). So funds have to draft complex rule amendments (based on legislation that has not been enacted yet), submit these to the FSCA (which cannot be done before the legislation has been enacted), and await FSCA approval.

There are more than 1,000 “normal active retirement funds” (by the FSCA’s classification) which will all be queuing for this approval as soon as the legislation is signed into law — which can hardly happen much sooner than the end of February, judging by the parliamentary calendar.

To imagine that members will be able to access cash from their retirement funds as early as March is a dangerous fantasy.

Erich Potgieter
Via BusinessLIVE

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