What are South Africa’s major problems when it comes to retirement? If we focus purely on the institutional side of the retirement journey, taking out human elements such as lack of preservation or insufficient contribution rates, a strong case can be made for the argument that there as many institutional challenges as there are human element challenges.

July is savings month. Adopting this label was government’s attempt to highlight the importance of savings and to try and create a savings culture in a country that is not famous for it. The reality is that it is a hard knock life for people who want to save, the economy is experiencing turbulent times and political actions/decisions are placing South Africa in mortal danger of yet another credit downgrade at the end of the year.