Nasfund drops cheques

 NASFUND members without bank accounts can no longer expect to be paid in cheques, especially their retirement money.

They have been advised to open up bank accounts to facilitate payment of their benefits.

This was stressed by chief executive Ian Tarutia, (pictured) who advised members to have bank accounts for convenient access to their benefits.

In a recent newspaper advertisement, Tarutia said the superfund would not be paying out any retirement funds in the form of bank cheques.

However, Nasfund had advised its members to lodge their withdrawal applications with  a bank account for direct deposits to be made. 

Nasfund business development officer Steven Mase said the process was targeting those members without bank accounts.

 He said: “The step taken to stop the use of bank cheques does not affect our members’ savings one way or another.

“This decision that Nasfund had made was given much thought. 

“It was not an over-night decision and control measures were also taken into account when this decision was made.” 

Nasfund also realised that this exercise would cut down on fraudulent activities that were becoming a common problem affecting the financial institutions. 

“This was also a way forward to keep up with banks on their transition to update their service provisions. 

“Nasfund had seen the need to cut down on cheques prints and to keep up with the banks’ transition to use up-to-date systems and services”. 

Nasfund is the successor entity of the National Provident Fund and was incorporated as a company under the Companies Act in May 2002.

Its membership were mainly workers from private sector companies, government owned corporations and statutory authorities, according to Mase. 

Nasfunds’ primary purpose was to provide its members (or their beneficiaries) financial protection at retirement, loss of employment, death, disability to work or when the normal flow of income is suddenly cut off.