So, we are seeing how best we can enable more infrastructure investment.”

The impact of Covid-19 on the retirement funds industry was also addressed during the session. As early as April, the Authority issued a circular to the industry to consider activating some of their rules which enable them to suspend contributions or to reduce them, in case they were starting to experience challenges with their income.

The FSCA ran a survey around June 2020 to get a sense how many employers or employees approached funds and requested to either reduce their contributions or suspend them completely. The results showed that nearly 40% of active funds were approached by either the employer or the employee requesting some sort of relief. That indicates the pressure in the economy, and it trickles down to the funds, as the employer is not receiving an income because of the lockdown, and therefore they are unable to pay salaries, which then affects their ability to contribute to a retirement fund.

“What we have started to see is that employers are now terminating retirement funds or liquidating them. It does raise quite a major concern structurally, because it’s so important for workers to be able to contribute into a retirement fund and employers are a good vehicle to

providing retirement funds. As a regulator, while acknowledging that there are real economic challenges, we are monitoring this and appeal to employers to still try and offer retirement funds in the future, rather than completely abandoning them.”

In closing, Makhubela spoke about the role of trustees in investing responsibly, referring to a guideline issued to the industry last year on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues. The guidance was on how Trustees should approach ESG factoring for their investments. This is an important issue that touches on the Covid-19 pandemic and the governance of companies.

“The issue of being a responsible investor, is so critical and because retirement funds have got the financial muscle, they are able to shape how companies approach the environment, how they approach their workers and how they approach their governance structures. It’s really incumbent upon our trustees and our funds to really champion this responsible investing goal.”

This year’s IRFA conference also focused on change, resilience, adaptation, innovation and invention in equipping delegates with knowledge and information to rethink traditional boundaries.