There is an estimated R80 billion in pension surpluses that pension funds need to apportion within the next three to five years, and an estimated R8 billion in unclaimed monies currently sitting in financial services companies in SA that belong to South African families.
The type of monies involved includes unclaimed insurance policies, pension fund surpluses, unclaimed shares and matured investments.
In SA, over 1 million people, it is estimated, change their contact details annually. This results in billions of rands in benefits not being claimed by their rightful beneficiaries. To address this situation, Benefit Recovery Services (BRS) has been founded.
BRS is a joint venture between ICL, Brian H Burts & Associates, Safika Holdings and MFG Capital. "We believe we have all the partners necessary to make this service work. We have the financial services, management, government and technology expertise vital to the success of this venture," says Ian Lewin, BRS managing director.
ICL (South Africa) has developed the infrastructure, integration and systems necessary to cope with the expected volumes BRS anticipates. ICL, along with partner Global Moment, has developed an integrated call centre scripting application that allows BRS to scale call centre resources as requirements grow.
In addition, ICL has utilised its business intelligence software WebFOCUS, to build the necessary back-end integration and reporting systems.
"Essentially our process is simple," says Tony Cross, sales manager of BRS. "The service will work on the basis that we contract with financial services organisations and pension funds, process their data, cross-match this to beneficiaries, contact them and facilitate the recovery of their monies. While the process is simple, the solution is highly sophisticated and the choice of ICL was an obvious one."
The last component of the technology BRS implemented is a Web site handling registration. www.mycash.co.za is available to all South Africans who want to register with BRS. Registering will ensure that, when benefits are discovered, BRS can easily contact the rightful beneficiaries.
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ICL South Africa, a subsidiary of Fujitsu Services Plc (Formerly ICL Plc), is one of the leading IT services companies in Europe, Middle East and Africa. It has an annual turnover of lb2.4 billion (EUR3.9 billion), employs 15 500 people and operates in over 30 countries. It designs, builds and operates IT systems and services for customers in the financial services, telecoms, retail, utilities and government markets. Its core strength is the delivery of IT infrastructure management and outsourcing across desktop, networking and data centre environments, together with a full range of related services, from infrastructure consulting through integration and deployment.
Headquartered in London, Fujitsu Services is the European-centred IT services arm of the Fujitsu Group. The Fujitsu Group is a $38 billion (about EUR43 billion) leader in customer-focused IT systems and services for the global marketplace.
Prior to April 2002, Fujitsu Services operated as ICL.
Web site: www.services.fujitsu.com