One of the biggest pension funds in the country – the Botswana’s Public Officers Pension Fund (BPOPF) is officially in bed with a South African originating company – NMG Botswana. The company is a joint venture between BPOPF (51%) and NMG South Africa (49%) and has been named the advisory firm to administrate the fund effective June 2021.
The development according to BPOPF comes as a result of a change in legislation that governs companies in the retirement and pension industry. The enactment of the new Retirement Fund Act in 2019, under the purview of the Non-Bank Financial Institutions Regulatory Authority (NBFIRA) has forced all the players in the pension and retirement sub-sector to restructure some of their businesses. In 2020 another key player in the industry – Botswana Life also launched an umbrella Fund known as Retirement Annuity Fund which now houses all the company’s previous existing retirement policies such as Mompati, Offshore Gold and Botswana Citizen Pension amongst others.
In November 2020, BPOPF’s Acting Chief Executive – Moemedi Malinda said after the enactment of the new legislation by NBFIRA, the Fund then began scouting for potential administrators both locally and regionally.
“We did a search for an administrator who has the capacity, experience and technical expertise to administer a fund our size. The top ones were then invited to submit proposals and the appointment followed the Fund’s procurement process”, said Malinda in late 2020.
Malinda further stated at the time that a Joint Venture formed would be responsible for amongst other things to maintain the Fund membership records, collect contributions on behalf of the fund as well as payment of benefits to members and remitting any excess moneys to the investment managers when appropriate.
This week BPOPF confirmed that the new joint venture has been tasked with collection contributions, management of payrolls and maintenance of records for the 156,000-member fund.
BPOF is classified as one of Africa’s largest pension funds and the dominant investor in the local economy.
