Retirement funds: let’s talk about the elephant in the room
Why the industry won’t do more to look after investors
There’s an elephant in the room. Not the Indian one – that one appears to have left the building. We want to discuss the African variety. It’s larger, louder and potentially more dangerous, and it likes to charge – a lot. Much has gone wrong in our country these past nine years. In essence, there’s been a wholesale failure in governance. Public officials were allowed to trample on the norms of our democracy, permitting and exploiting conflicts of interest, and neglecting to hold the responsible parties to account. If there’s one positive to this, it’s the way society and our media mobilised to bring all this to light. It’s a reminder for all of us to be vigilant about potential abuses. As Jon Stewart, former host of The Daily Show, put it: “When you smell something, say something.” In that spirit, the African elephant we want to sniff out here is the retirement fund industry – or, more specifically, the way its poor stewardship contributes to the high failure rate among retireme...
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