BY KENNETH NYANGANI
Insurance and Pensions Commission (Ipec) acting commissioner, Blessmore Kazengura has said the country needs a solution to aid impoverished pensioners who lost their life savings when the Zimbabwean dollar was demonitised.
Kazengura made the remarks during a four-day workshop that ended in Mutare on Sunday, which was attended by legislators and other stakeholders.
The workshop was meant to unpack the findings and recommendations of the commission of inquiry into the conversion of insurance and pension values.
It was also meant to sensitise parliamentarians on envisaged insurance and pension legal reforms and discuss the proposed post-inquiry reforms.
Kazengura said the issue of pensions was a complex matter that should be handled with caution.
“We convened this workshop to share ideas on how best we can proceed with implementation of the post-inquiry reforms for the benefit of pensioners and policyholders who lost their life savings, as well as the development of the sector,” he said.
“As we interact with policyholders and pensioners on a regular basis, we share their pain because, indeed, life savings were lost, hence the need for a holistic solution that is informed by our past mistakes as a country.
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“We are here to unpack the findings and recommendations of the commission of inquiry into the conversion of insurance and pension values. It is for that reason that we convened this meeting, so that we can walk the journey together as we share ideas on how best to chart the way forward on this complex matter.
“As a statutory body, established by an Act of Parliament, we value input from all our key stakeholders, including Parliament. We request that as people’s representatives, be frank with us so that we can improve where we are lacking. We will also frankly share the areas requiring your support and that of the Executive in order to consolidate the gains of effective regulation and supervision of the insurance sector,” he added.
Pensioners and insurance holders lost quadrillions of their Zimbabwean dollar investments during the process of conversion of the Zimbabwe dollar to the United States currency. Most of their Zimbabwean dollar investments turned into a few US cents or dollars.
The commission of inquiry’s investigations covered a 20-year period from 1996 to 2015, examining the regulatory, financial and governance affairs of 11 life insurance companies, nine funeral insurers, four independent pension administrators, 15 stand-alone pension funds, the National Social Security Authority, the Government Pension Agency and the Insurance and Pensions Commission.
The commission, chaired by retired Justice Leslie George Smith, conducted public hearings in all provinces in the country from 2015 to 2016, where they received complaints from members of the public, insurance and pension organisations.
Some of the factors which were said to have caused the loss included inflation, currency de-basing, and the exchange rate used during the de-monetisation of the Zimbabwe dollar to US dollar in 2015 and negative real investment returns on fixed income securities such as bonds, Treasury Bills and money-market instruments — which resulted in loss of value resulting in insurance companies and pension funds divesting from such investments during the period 2001 to 2008.
