A retirement fund that blamed a banking “technical error” for missed pension payments has been ordered to compensate a member for delays in resolving the matter.
The Office of the Pension Funds Adjudicator ordered the Motor Industry Provident Fund to pay a R5 000 penalty to a pensioner who went without his monthly income for seven months, despite repeated attempts to resolve the issue.
The complainant had been a member of the fund from July 1997 until his retirement and had received a monthly pension since March 2017. He lodged a complaint after failing to receive his pension payments from August 2024 to February 2025. He submitted proof of his bank account details and said these had been provided to the fund.
The fund acknowledged that the payments were not made, attributing the problem to a technical error that caused the August 2024 payment to be rejected by the member’s bank. According to the fund, this resulted in all subsequent monthly payments being missed. It said an attempted back payment of R72 394.55 was also rejected, and it required written confirmation from the bank before processing the arrears.
Although the fund received confirmation of the member’s banking details on 21 October 2025 and undertook to follow up on payment the following month, no further progress was made.
In a determination, the Adjudicator found that the complainant had been materially prejudiced by the fund’s failure to resolve the matter. The fund’s conduct was described as “reprehensible”.
The fund was ordered to pay the outstanding arrears of R72 394.55, together with interest, and to pay an additional R5 000 in compensation for failing to deal with the complaint timeously and for the inconvenience caused to the member.
