John Murphy, the Pension Funds Adjudicator, is putting together a more
efficient system for dealing with complaints from consumers and part of his
plan involves a name-and-shame tactic to expose errant pension fund staff.
He has warned the industry that funds, administrators, employers and
lawyers must improve their standard of response.
Unco-operative, arrogant or incompetent individuals at pension funds and
companies could be exposed in the media or brought to the attention of
their seniors, who will be urged to take disciplinary action against the
staff member, he says.
The procedure when you put in a complaint to the adjudicator is that you
have to give your fund an opportunity to respond and this written response
must accompany your complaint.
Murphy says, while many responses are good, an equal number are incomplete,
sloppy and, in some instances, "downright arrogant".
Often he receives an excellent response from the principal officer of a
small fund while larger funds often miss the mark.
"It has everything to do with the attitude, skill, experience and general
motivation of the person who has to prepare the response on behalf of the
fund or company," he says.
Other steps that Murphy has suggested for speeding up the responses from
funds and companies:
* Funds should appoint a person to investigate complaints and to deal with
the adjudicator's office;
* A distress and inconvenience award should be introduced, forcing funds to
pay you between R1 000 and R5 000; and
* A rule nisi procedure for funds which fail to respond. Using this legal
procedure, Murphy may give funds or companies a 14-day ultimatum to prove
why he should not grant a fund member's request.
Murphy says after analysing complaints to his office has he has found that
no more than 25 percent require determination - the rest must be resolved
by conciliation or advice.
Many pension fund members are looking to test the reliability, validity or
fairness of a fund decision and essentially want a second opinion from a
disinterested outsider.
A shortage of skilled personnel and lack of experience in assessing
complaints has lead the adjudicator's office to treat all complaints
equally and standard requests for information have been sent off to pension
funds or members who have sent in complaints.
But to save time, Murphy is introducing a screening process whereby each
complaint is assessed at the time it is lodged, in order to prioritise
important complaints and to identify the best method of processing them.
"In this way, we should be able to identify the 20 to 30 important
complaints received every month and keep control over them in such as way
that they will be processed within a three-to-six-month period," he says.
Before that can happen Murphy says additional staff must be appointed, the
backlog of complaints must be brought under control and pension funds must
improve on their internal methods of dispute resolution.
Murphy is interviewing people for three investigative posts and hopes to
make appointments in the next two months.
In the last four months, his office has cleared 1 200 complaints mostly by
means of a short written advice to fund members or by other means of
settlement.
This means that the current number of complaints is 1 300 and Murphy
expects about 200 to 300 of these will require determination, while the
remaining 1 000 can be resolved by advice, agreement or withdrawal in the
next three months.