Johannesburg - The country's largest financial services group, Old Mutual, has once again fallen out with its former client, the SA Local Authorities Pension Fund.
At the heart of the matter is the refusal by Old Mutual - which was fired in July as the fund's administrator - to pay two invoices, a R3.2m take-on fee and R1.1m administration fee to newly appointed administrator Fairsure.
Old Mutual has been taking legal advice from its lawyers to ascertain whether it was illegal to pay both invoices. The invoices are the product of a contract that the fund entered into on August 30 with Fairsure, which will rake in a total of R4.3m before even performing a single administrative task for the fund's 19 000 members.
The fund has R6.5bn in assets under administration and its members are mainly municipal workers spread across the country's nine provinces.
The dual administration charge arises out of different interpretations by the administrators over the transitional period.
Old Mutual said the three months notice period expired at the end of this month, after which it would have 14 days to hand over the records to Fairsure. Fairsure said its contract with the fund started at the beginning of this month.
Old Mutual performed all the administrative duties of the fund in September. Bongani Madikiza, Old Mutual's general manager for corporate services, said: "This is a very large account and Old Mutual needs to ensure that its handling of the matter is correct in all respects.
Not co-operating
"With that in mind, the matter has been referred for legal advice to guide Old Mutual in this regard. We cannot pay two administrators for the same service for the month."
City Press Business asked the fund's chairperson Bongani Maphanga why the fund was paying Fairsure an administration fee for September. He said the fund was contractually bound to pay Fairsure in September and accused Old Mutual of refusing to co-operate with the new administrator.
"We are not getting co-operation from Old Mutual in terms of the handing over of all the records of the fund to Fairsure. We don't know why Old Mutual is acting this way because Fairsure is ready to take over. We are preparing a letter to the Financial Services Board to inform it of this matter," said Maphanga.
Fairsure executive director Graeme Brein said his company was contractually entitled to the September administration fee.
"In terms of our contract we were appointed with effect from September 1 2008. In terms of Regulation 24 the previous administrator has 14 days after their termination date to hand over the fund administration to the new administrators," he said.
But Old Mutual denied that it was not co-operating with Fairsure, saying it was given three months notice to hand over the fund when it was fired in July.
It is not the first time that the fund has entered into a questionable contract that has left its members a few rands short.
Trying to recover the money
In 2004, the fund hired Imbumba Brokers to broker funeral insurance for its members. But the deal was marred by an unlawful upfront payment of R893 417 to the brokerage.
The fund is still trying to recover the money from the unregistered brokerage, which vanished with the municipal workers' life savings.
Maphanga said the fund decided to part ways with Old Mutual because of a number of inefficiencies incurred by the company, including keeping inaccurate records and failing to pay benefits to orphans belonging to the fund's deceased members.
"You cannot have orphans that are not getting paid for more than 10 years. Old Mutual does not follow up on claims and documents. In some instances they don't even acknowledge they have received documents. We took a decision to fire them in May.
"Old Mutual has also been keeping inaccurate data, and this has cost the fund R5 million. We have appointed Glotin and auditing firm TFK International to sanitise and audit the data to ensure that it is clean," said Maphanga.
But Madikiza disagreed: "We categorically deny that Old Mutual is keeping inaccurate data. We also refute any allegation that Old Mutual did not follow up on claims or the paying of benefits to orphans.
"We should point out that there are cases where payments have been suspended due to failure on the side of the beneficiaries to provide certificates of existence as is required by the rules of the fund."
- City Press