Editor's Thoughts.

Had today’s newsletter all nicely lined up last night and then National Treasury publishes their paper on unclaimed assets!

Here’s my quick summary: NT proposes a single, national system to help South Africans find and claim forgotten money - from unclaimed retirement benefits and dormant bank accounts to unpaid insurance and investment proceeds. Instead of each financial institution keeping separate records and running its own tracing process, a central administrator would hold a consolidated database, coordinate tracing, operate one public-facing claims portal and process valid claims. The assets themselves would be transferred for safe custody and investment with the Corporation for Public Deposits, while remaining the property of their rightful owners and beneficiaries.

The plan would begin with retirement fund benefits before expanding to banking, insurance and investments. Treasury is also asking whether claims should eventually expire, for example, 45 years after an asset became payable or when its owner would have reached the age of 110. The core objective is to improve tracing, cut duplicated administration costs and return more of the estimated R88 billion in unclaimed assets to the South Africans it belongs to.

There are 8 questions at the end of their paper that they’re inviting your feedback on – and I know you’ll have some opinions.

In other news, it’s Money Smart Week South Africa this week, where the theme is “Money Smart: The Power of Possible”. The aim is to provide free unbiased, and non-commercial financial education across the country to build financial resilience. Workshops, webinars, community sessions, and online talks all coordinated to help people with their money.

And speaking of webinars, join me tomorrow at 9am for our Women’s Day webinar – where we’ll be looking at the latest report from Just Share and surfacing some of the social issues around this narrative. Register here.

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