In terms of Notice 3 of 2017, funds registered prior to 1 March 2018 has been given exemption from the provisions of these new Regulations until 1 March 2019. Contained in these new regulations are a few conditions which are required to be mentioned in the Rules, especially the requirements contained in Regulation 38(2)(e) which deal with the paid-up members. This effectively means that the rules of all retirement funds will have to have these requirements incorporated by 1 March 2019, which includes registration by the FSCA.
Due to the possibility that the FSCA will experience a bottleneck with regard to the registration and approval of these rule amendments due to the short timeframe, rule amendments will have to be submitted for registration prior to the 2018/2019 festive season. SEB will therefore shortly embark on a project to draft the necessary rule amendments for those funds under our administration for which we perform the drafting function.
Our aim is to start with the project by end July 2018 and hopefully the drafting will be completed by end September 2018. The Funds involved will have to provide us with feedback on such rule amendments as a matter of urgency to enable us to make the last changes by mid November. This is to facilitate signature by Boards of Trustees at the very latest by mid-December 2018.
In a nutshell the Rule Amendments envisaged will contain the following changes to the Rules:
- A definition of “Retirement Benefits Counselling” will be included which will to its definition in the PFA and reference will be made to this requirment under Retirement Benefits and Withdrawal Benefits.
- We will update the Rules to provide for the postponement of payment of the retirement benefits of Members who had retired from service but who do not require immediate payment of their retirement benefits.
- Under Withdrawal Benefits we will provide for the paid-up benefit as an option (if necessary), and for this option to be the default if the member makes no election in this regard.
- Funds will be able to request amendments to the Retirement Benefits in the Rules, if necessary, to align with their default annuitisation strategies.
Please note that, due to the workload that we are taking on with this project and the short time frame in which we will have to obtain registration of these rule amendments, we will not be able to incorporate these amendments in a set of revised rules.