Building workers pension fund calls for benefits to be claimed

The Namibia Building Workers Pension Fund, an umbrella fund for the construction sector, is encouraging pensioners and their beneficiaries to claim their pension benefits.

This is as the Namibia Financial Institutions Supervisory Authority says the retirement fund industry in Namibia saw a total of N$218.7 million in unclaimed pension benefits by pensioners and their beneficiaries in 2023.

This is lower than the N$229.1 million reported in 2022.

The fund’s principal officer, Enwich Kazondo, says the construction sector historically had a relatively large number of unclaimed benefits.

This is because members that exited the fund were untraceable, despite efforts to find them.

The fund created Epia Financial Services to handle all administrative activities, including the tracing of pensioners and their beneficiaries.

As of 2022, an estimated 2 500 benefits remained unclaimed.

Through Epia, the fund initiated a tracing process for unclaimed members in September 2023.

Since then, over 1 900 members have been located, and payments have been successfully made to more than 800 members.

“We believe this is a big achievement. It is really important to us. Ultimately, we want our stakeholders to know and trust that we make every effort to ensure that claimed benefits are paid out – either to the retiring members themselves or to their determined beneficiaries.

This is one of our major priorities.

We also want retiring members to indeed benefit from their savings for old age, and in the event of their death, we would like to see that their dependants or beneficiaries are also supported through benefits paid out by the fund,” he said.

Kazondo encouraged current members – as well as their employers – to ensure that beneficiary forms are updated when necessary, and at least once a year.