Ireland’s decision to launch MyFutureFund on 1 January 2026 is another sign that governments are moving to widen retirement coverage. The scheme is expected to affect around 750,000 workers and is designed to bring people into retirement saving automatically rather than leaving participation to chance.
That matters for South Africa, because our problem is not just low savings. It is also weak governance. Recent years have shown how quickly member protection can be undermined when independence is compromised, when oversight is too soft, or when service provider relationships become too comfortable.
The policy temptation is always to focus on access alone. But access without guardrails is not reform. It is scale without safety.
That is why auto-enrolment, if it returns to the South African agenda, must be paired with something the industry still does not say loudly enough: independent governance is not optional. If more workers are brought into the system, then the system itself must be stronger, cleaner and more transparent than it is today.
The FSCA’s own reporting shows that unclaimed benefits remain high, while delays in death and withdrawal claims continue to drive complaints. At the same time, the two-pot system has demanded heavy admin changes, with 857 rule amendment applications and 848 registrations by 31 March 2025. Those are not minor implementation issues. They are signs of a system under pressure.
The next phase of reform should therefore ask harder questions:
· Who is actually overseeing the structures that hold member money?
· Are boards independent in practice, or only in name?
· Can members trust the system to protect them when something goes wrong?
Ireland’s auto-enrolment launch is useful because it shows what policy can do when it is designed to broaden access. South Africa now needs the second half of that equation: a governance model that can handle the people it brings in.
If retirement reform is serious, it cannot stop at enrolment. It has to include independence, accountability and member protection from the start.
