Martin Tarusenga
The Insurance and Pensions Commission recently put up public statements warning the public against engaging individuals and organisations purporting to be insurance or pension experts when they are not qualified and registered as financial advisors.
However, the statements fail to give details the individuals and organisations, and the fake advice thus provided and is easily interpreted as an attack on pension organisations.
Further, IPEC’s statements about lack of qualifications on the part of the individuals and the organisations, and about its ability to provide resolutions to pensioner problems free of charge, respectively stand out as hypocritical, apparent falsity, and a use of the old (economics) monopoly insider-outsider tactic to preclude progressive approaches. This is when the stark realities of IPEC’s historical litany of dismal failures are considered.
A historical record of pensioner complaints and concerns in the media and elsewhere stand as proof of these IPEC failures. Landmarks of these IPEC failures can be tracked back to 2011 in an analytic piece titled “Pension entitlement conundrum – is there a case for insurance companies to answer”. The analysis discussed how pension schemes operate to deliver on rightful pension benefits, and questioned whether pension schemes in Zimbabwe, as administered by insurance companies and regulated by IPEC, walked this long established path to pension delivery.
The comments were motivated by evasiveness and reticence on the part of insurance companies and IPEC as regulator, in the face of widespread public indictments that benefits being entitled to pensioners and insurance policyholders were less than the rightful benefits.
Many a pensioner would make the journey to IPEC offices and would not get categorical answers as to whether the paltry benefits they were entitled to were correct, and how exactly these entitlements were calculated. Instead most pensioners would be tossed around by clueless IPEC officers back to insurance companies. The insurance companies in turn would refer them back to IPEC or to pension fund boards of Trustees, which boards of trustees turned out to be indistinguishable from very hostile employers.
In short, there was simply no solution for the pensioners from anyone, and in particular from IPEC as regulator, just as there is still none from IPEC and the institutions. But not until the pensioners resolved to congregate under pensioner organisations, and began a concerted articulation of their concerns through various channels. The association of pensioners and insurance policyholders under these pensioner organisations gave the pensioners a glimmer of hope – not IPEC.
By directly questioning the methods used to calculate pension benefits, and presenting counter benefit proposals, one pensioner organisation would persuade the then-Finance Minister Tendai Biti to set up an investigation in 2012. While the investigation report would turn out to be flawed, its suppression would unravel gross mis-regulation, mis-governance and mismanagement of pension funds and the pension and insurance industries. In the event of these disconcerting revelations, the organisation would campaign to have these entrenched shenanigans resolved at Government level.
A Commission of Inquiry led by Justice Smith was set up by then President Mugabe in 2015. Clearly IPEC had failed in its primary role of protecting the interests of pensioners, when another Commission got set up to look into what it was doing. All the while pensioners continued to seek help from IPEC, as regulator only to find it still had no solution for them. It had no professional regulatory stance to the problems that the Inquiry had been set to resolve, thereby driving the pensioners to the pensioner organisation.
Instead of setting out to resolve the pensioner problems, IPEC unrepentantly engaged in further apparent mischief to compound pensioner problems, by attempting to enact legislation prejudicial to pensioners and insurance policyholders. Media analytical pieces entitled “Provisions for Pension, Provident Fund Bill” and “Changes in insurance regulations give false sense of protection” bear witness to this apparent institutional mischief.
Against this series of IPEC failures, the pensioner organisation by this time had become the true representative of the interests of pensioners and policyholders in the public eye – not IPEC.
But the conclusion on IPEC incapacity to resolve pensioner problems was made emphatic in a recent analysis entitled “Is IPEC fit and proper”. This analysis poignantly suggests that the Commission of Inquiry may have been corrupted in the very same way the 2012 investigation was subverted to the prejudice of pensioners.
In an instance representing pensioner sentiments, this analysis narrates that while the Commission of Inquiry findings condemned IPEC outright, as incapable of providing the requisite interventions in pensioner problems, the Commission recommended that the same IPEC implement a recommended compensation programme. This was in complete violation of standing principles and practices of good corporate governance.
The analysis further illustrated how the evil misplaced interests of high ranking Finance Ministry officials prevailed on the Commission of Inquiry to scribe totally unprofessional recommendations that are completely disconnected to the findings of the Inquiry, and prejudicial to pensioners. Overall the analysis illustrated that IPEC remains the same, at its Board level, and at its Management level, incapable of providing solutions to pensioner problems.
If anything, and by a long shot, it is the pensioner organisations, the individuals in these organisations (referred to in the IPEC baseless statements), that have clarity and honesty in running a well-meant pensioner compensation program, and in operating a regulatory framework that can professionally play the primary role of protecting pensioner interests – not IPEC with this history of failures.
Isn’t it time MPs, the Finance Minister and the President became more sensitive to pensioners’ plight, and reviewed the IPEC Administration operating system such as to ensure appropriate pensioner representation in the IPEC Board?
Martin Tarusenga is General Manager of Zimbabwe Pensions & Insurance Rights, email, martin@zimpirt.com; telephone; +263 (0)4 797 020; Mobile; +263 (0)772 889 716
Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not represent those of the organisations that the author represent.
