Denisha Subjee, Corporate Relationship Executive at Graviton
Financial advice is often treated as a point-in-time intervention, yet the evidence suggests it delivers the greatest value when it is embedded across the full member journey. In South Africa, the gap between retirement expectations and retirement outcomes remains wide: many members delay planning before retirement, while many retirees face complex income, healthcare and legacy decisions after leaving the workforce. This is where professional advice becomes most powerful – not simply as a product recommendation, but as ongoing decision support that helps members move from uncertainty to action at each life stage.
Recent South African industry research reinforces the scale of the challenge. According to the latest Sanlam Benchmark Survey, a large share of working South Africans remain underprepared for retirement, with financial pressure, competing priorities and low levels of long-term planning continuing to undermine outcomes. The survey also highlights a persistent gap between recognising the importance of retirement planning and actually taking structured action with the support of professional advice. These findings point to a market where need is high, confidence is uneven, and the role of trusted advice remains significantly underutilised across the retirement journey.
Pre-retirement: turning awareness into action
The pre-retirement phase is where the advice gap does the most long-term damage. Members may understand, in theory, that they need to save, preserve and plan; however, they often struggle to convert that awareness into consistent behaviour. The Sanlam Benchmark Survey shows that many South Africans still postpone retirement planning because short-term financial strain feels more urgent than long-term retirement security. This reinforces the reality that many people enter their peak earning years without a structured roadmap. For advisers and retirement funds, this is not simply a communication challenge – it is a behavioural challenge that requires timely, personalised intervention.
The pre-retirement opportunity becomes clearer when viewed through the member journey. Before retirement, members need advice at critical moments: when they join a fund, when they change jobs, when they consider cashing out benefits, when debt crowds out long-term saving, and when policy changes alter available options. The Sanlam Benchmark Survey also points to a recurring pattern of insufficient preservation, inconsistent savings behaviour and low confidence in retirement readiness. This suggests that effective advice in the pre-retirement stage must go beyond technical projections. It should help members prioritise preservation, understand contribution adequacy, and make practical trade-offs in an environment where disposable income is under pressure.
Professional advice is especially important because knowledge gaps remain significant. Industry commentary on recent retirement research highlights that many consumers still overestimate how prepared they are, underestimate longevity risk, and do not know where to begin. In practice, that means advice must be made more accessible, more relevant, and more closely tied to real member decisions. In the pre-retirement phase, successful advice models are those that combine education with action: nudging higher contributions, discouraging unnecessary leakage, simplifying investment choices, and helping members understand how today’s decision affects tomorrow’s income.
Post-retirement: advice becomes an income strategy
If pre-retirement advice is about accumulation and preservation, post-retirement advice is about sustainability and resilience. Retirement does not simplify financial decision-making; it intensifies it. Retirees must decide how much income to draw, how to balance certainty and flexibility, how to provide for dependants, how to manage rising healthcare costs, and how to structure their estates. Without professional guidance, these decisions are often made reactively and can permanently reduce financial security in later life.
South African data also shows why post-retirement advice deserves far more emphasis. The Sanlam Benchmark Survey underscores that retirement is not a single event but a complex transition in which members need support to convert accumulated savings into sustainable income. It points to ongoing uncertainty around drawdown decisions, income sustainability and broader financial planning needs after retirement. These are not marginal technicalities; they are core elements of financial resilience in later life. Post-retirement advice therefore needs to cover much more than investment performance. It must integrate income planning, product selection, longevity management, estate planning and the practical realities of transitioning out of full-time work.
This is where thought leadership in the sector must evolve. Too often, post-retirement engagement begins only once a member is ready to retire, when the stakes are already high and the range of viable choices may be narrower. A member-journey approach suggests the opposite: retirement income advice should start before retirement, continue through the transition into retirement, and remain available as circumstances change. Advice is not only about helping retirees choose between options; it is about helping them adapt those choices over time as inflation, market conditions, health status and family responsibilities shift.
What the member journey lens means for the industry
For retirement funds, employers and advice businesses, the implication is clear: advice should be designed as a continuous service model rather than a late-stage intervention. In the South African context, where financial fragility is high and retirement literacy remains uneven, the strongest value proposition will come from connecting advice to moments that matter along the journey. That includes onboarding, preservation at resignation, contribution reviews, two-pot decisions, pre-retirement counselling, income structuring at retirement, and regular post-retirement reviews. When advice is embedded at each of these points, it can help close the persistent gap between what members intend to do and what they actually do.
The broader lesson is that South Africa does not only have a retirement savings problem; it also has an advice access and advice timing problem. Members need professional support before retirement to build sufficient savings and make better preservation decisions, and they need equally robust support after retirement to turn capital into sustainable income and long-term security. A thought leadership agenda grounded in the member journey recognises that the value of advice is cumulative: the earlier it starts, the more practical it becomes, and the longer it continues, the more likely it is to improve outcomes. In a market where only a small minority appear on track for retirement success, expanding the reach and relevance of professional advice may be one of the most important levers the industry still has.
In conclusion, closing South Africa’s retirement advice gap will require the industry to engage members far earlier and far more deliberately along the retirement journey. The Sanlam Benchmark Consumer Study indicates that the ideal age for education about retirement goals is from age 35. We believe that the journey should begin at age 40 or 45, creating a critical 15- to 20-year window in which members can still meaningfully influence their retirement outcomes. During this period, advisers and funds should encourage members to increase contribution levels with a long-term target of 27.5%, while conducting a targeted financial needs analysis every five years. Each review should assess debt levels, retirement capital, investment portfolios, insurance needs and cover, short-term risk protection, living expenses, budgeting and health-related considerations that may affect contribution adequacy and future resilience. Ultimately, the goal should be to help members enter retirement debt-free by the year before normal retirement age, because too many retirees continue to struggle financially in their first years of retirement while still repaying debt. A member-journey approach grounded in these actions can turn advice from a once-off intervention into a practical strategy for better retirement outcomes.
ENDS
