Trustee Focus Committee Information

Trustees frequently face unique and numerous challenges in the execution of their duties. These challenges range from extensive legal responsibilities and management and control of retirement funds. This is exacerbated by frequent changes taking place within the industry and INSUFFICICIENT LEVELS OF EXPERTISE AMONGST trustees.

In light of this the importance of a forum promoting the interests of trustees cannot be over-emphasized.

This Committee works together with other IRF existing committees in focusing on topics such as the Social Security and Retirement Reform, Education and Skilling of Trustees, Governance and other relevant topics, identifying trustee needs and engaging with relevant stakeholders on how trustees can be assisted in dealing with their trustee duties and the challenges they face in the management of those funds. The committee is at its inception stages, and work is under way to invite new members to participate in the activities of the committee. There are also a number of programmes lined up, that would be announced by the IRF in due course, aiming to reach out to trustees. Measures are being explored on how different forms including electronic, media and seminars can be used to reach out to trustees and ultimately members of retirement funds.

The motto of this committee is : IMPACT, EMPOWERMENT ,DIFFERENCE & CHANGE.

The first of the 2012 Trustee Regional Workshop Series was held in Johannesburg, Durban, Capetown and East London.

With the recent introduction of Regulation 28, and the launch of the Crisa Code, South Africa becomes only the second market in the world, after the UK, to have a defined set of principles defining the role of the institutional investor in promoting a responsible investment approach across all asset classes. Both Regulation 28 and CRISA have all brought investors to pay attention to environmental, social and governance issues in their investment decision-making and investment activities.

These developments have placed a responsibility to pension fund trustees to align a fund’s investment policy, strategy and reporting frameworks to the new legislation.

During the course of March and April the IRF trustee committee set to reach out to trustees in its first for 2012 regional Workshop Series to educate trustees in understanding their responsibilities.

® Cape Town – 27 March ®Durban – 29 March ®Jhb– 03 April ® East London – 12 April

The Workshops culminated with a well organized and highly informative forum for trustees to share experiences and educate themselves on the topic of sustainable investments for pension funds. This being a new area for trustees to consider in their investment decision making, the task team felt that indeed there was a need to share information, to ensure trustees were complaint with the law and most importantly that this was done in an easy to understand and jargon free manner. The workshops covered regulation 28 in relation to the CRISA code and ESG as well as a perspective form the Regulator on compliance with regulation 28 and what trustees need to be doing. Thereafter there was a group work session where questions were allocated to groups to answer related to the topic. Trustees were also asked to share the challenges they faced in implementing ESG considerations into their investment policy statements.

The support received was good and we were especially hearted by the response from the East London trustees – a region that IRF took its workshops to for the first time. We have seen that the workshops have become popular with several calls encouraging more sessions of this kind for the future.

The Workshop Series covered:

• An Overview of Regulation 28

• An overview of the CRISA code

• What do trustees need to do to be compliant with both Regulation 28 and the CRISA code

• Breakaway sessions on challenges faced with implementation

For Workshop presentations click here:

IRF_workshop_B_Furstenburg_CRISA_code_2012_latest.ppt

2012_IRF_workshop_REG_28_WILMA_MOKUPO_final_(3).ppt

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