adminNatasha Chamba, Business Reporter
RETIRED foreign nationals constitute a majority of the estimated 50 000 clients with unclaimed pension benefits valued at about $30 million, the Insurance and Pensions Commissions (IPEC) has said.
IPEC public relations officer Mr Lloyd Gumbo said the value of benefits lying idle has risen from $25 million in the first quarter of 2018. The Commission has expressed concern over the situation as some of the unclaimed funds belong to immigrant pensioners who have since gone back to their countries.
“The number of unclaimed pensions continues to rise since the reported $25 million in the first quarter of the year after 24 000 pensioners failed to collect their pension pay-outs,” said Mr Gumbo.
“The figure has gone up. These people now near a number of 50 000 who have not been claiming their money and amounts to about $30 million which has not been not claimed.
“The most common cases is that of Malawian and Mozambican nationalities who went back to their home countries. The mining industry pension fund has even followed some to their countries so they can come back and claim their pensions.”
Mr Gumbo said some locals had also not collected their pension claims hence IPEC was conducting awareness programmes in an effort to reach out to beneficiaries.
“As IPEC we have requested a list of pension fund beneficiaries who have not been claiming their funds. We have since been given some of the names but not all of them.
“They are still compiling. What we intend to do is to make it easy for these beneficiaries to be able to access or to know that they have benefits that they have not claimed. We intend to publish all of the names of the people who have not claimed their monies.”
IPEC has said it was working on improving its technology to match global standards where policy holders can have access to their benefits by entering their particulars on the regulator’s website.
“We are also working on a system that will make it possible for someone to check on our website for their benefit status. This is happening in technologically advanced countries like South Africa,” Mr Gumbo said.
He said the unclaimed money was put in what is known as a ‘Guardian Fund’. If five years lapses without the money being claimed, it will be used for national development projects. — @queentauruszw
Online Reporter