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Big Business Insights: Retirement in a changing world
The changing landscape of employment demands creative financial solutions. Traditional nine-to-five desk jobs with financial benefits tied to a single employer are less common than they once were. Today, the rise of the gig economy and new work models, accelerated by the global pandemic, have reshaped how we work. We may even need to change the language we’ve used for years.
In this episode of the Big Business Insights podcast, host Blessing Utete unpacks this evolving landscape of retirement and financial planning together with Dr Bomikazi Zeka, Associate Professor in Finance and Financial Planning at the University of Canberra, and futurist and CEO of Flux Trends, Dion Chang. They discuss the new Two-Pot Retirement System and the diverse economic and social factors affecting retirement planning globally, and have predictions about Gen Z’s ways of working.
Resources used in this episode:
● Weforum.org: Global Risks Report
● Treasury.gov.za: Retirement Fund Reform
● Oxfordre.com: Social Policy: History (1900–1950)
● PopTech YouTube: The changing world of work
● SABC YouTube Clip: Two-Pot System
● LinkedIn: How big is the creator economy? Three times larger than we thought!
Old Mutual Corporate Big Business Insights Ep.2 Looking ahead to retirement in the changing world
Blessing Utete: The world is changing and changing fast. We constantly need to navigate new apps, platforms, skills, and attitudes. But some things need to change.
PopTech YouTube Clip: We've been running companies the same way since the industrial revolution. When we made them purely for the purpose of doing the same thing over and over at scale as efficiently as possible.
It was based on Ford and the production line. The Fordist approach was about pure efficiency, speed of production, uh, lowest cost. All Fords were black because black paint dried quickest that whole construct is a dead construct, really. It belongs to a previous era.
Blessing Utete: In 1956, the Pension Funds Act was passed in South Africa, introducing legislation to govern the industry. That too has needed a few updates to keep up with the times.
SABC YouTube Clip: Now starting from September 1st, South Africans can access their retirement savings through the two part retirement system that follows President Ramaphosa's signing of the Pension Fund Amendment Bill. The system allows workers to access a small portion of their retirement savings before retirement for emergencies, promoting preservation and aiding those struggling to make ends meet. Now, members
Blessing Utete: Will this be enough to help South Africans preserve their savings for an income after employment? What will retirement look like for the next generation? Welcome to the Big Business Insights podcast brought to you by Old Mutual Corporate. I'm your host, Blessing Utete, the Managing Executive at Old Mutual Corporate Consultants.
By meeting thought leaders and visionaries across sectors, looking at the past, the present, and the future, we aim to give business leaders the 360 degree advantage.
Our guest today will help us navigate the changing world and help us imagine what the challenges and opportunities might be for work, and life after work in the future.
Dr. Bomikazi Zeka is the associate professor in finance and financial planning at the university of Canberra. Bomikazi's research interest is in the economic outcomes of previously disadvantaged individuals, particularly women, people of color, and older adults. Thank you for joining us today, Bomikazi.
Bomikazi Zeka: I'm delighted to join you. Thank you for having me.
Blessing Utete: Dion Chang is the founder and CEO of Flux Trends, a respected trend analyst. Dion specializes in identifying unexpected business opportunities. Within shifting trends. Welcome Dion.
Dion Chang: Hi Blessing and hello to all the listeners. Thanks for having me.
Blessing Utete: Maybe just to start off, you two come from very different backgrounds, but we wanted to get your unique perspectives to explore this topic, but because as things stand, less than 10%, in fact, it said 6% of South Africans are adequately prepared for retirement. Why is this? And is it a global phenomenon?
Bomikazi Zeka: Absolutely. This isn't something that's unique to the South African context because planning for retirement has always been so much more complicated than putting money into a retirement fund, right? There's a level of financial sophistication and financial literacy that comes with it, such as, you know, understanding.
How your fund works, how the contributions are made into the fund, the investment structure, the tax implications, the fees that are involved. And so we assume that if you put money into your fund, you'll be okay, but that's only one part of the process and I think that's the operative word here is that it's a process that needs to be undertaken.
It's not a once off activity so there's a high level of active engagement that comes with it, and from a behavioral point of view, I think that these statistics really reflect how retirement planning is put off for two reasons. The first is that there's no immediate reward for doing it, but there's also no immediate penalty for not doing it.
So with all of the competing demands that come with, you know, life today, it's so easy to put it off, but then there's the missed opportunity to grow your nest egg.
Blessing Utete: Yeah, it's very interesting about the diverse views around retirement and then your work focuses on economic policies and how different parts of society are impacted by these.
Can you talk a little bit more about this and what you've seen on the topic of retirement?
Bomikazi Zeka: We already know about the gender pay gap and in South Africa it's sitting at approximately 20%, but this gender pay gap also translates into a retirement savings gap because your retirement fund contributions are a function of your salary.
So if you're earning less than your contributing lives and so while we want to believe that economic policies are gender neutral, the truth is, is that they're still very gender biased because women take on a lot more unpaid work than their male counterparts and they're taking time off to care for children or aging parents.
And while this type of work is important and it satisfies the need, it goes unremunerated, and if we're adding mom tax into this equation and missed opportunities to apply for promotion because of intermittent labor market participation. What we end up seeing is a lag in policy response to account for the career trajectories of women, who then are more likely to have inadequate savings for their retirement and increasingly are becoming at risk of experiencing poverty at retirement age.
Blessing Utete: Yeah, very interesting from that perspective. Let me go to Dion now. Dion, part of what you do is assisting companies to embrace
change and embedding culture of innovation to corporate operating systems. Why is it so important to embrace change? And what challenges do you encounter when trying to achieve this at a corporate level?
Dion Chang: People talk about the velocity of change, especially after the pandemic, the watershed moments that the world went into that suddenly we had to, after lockdown, especially companies and corporate companies had to embrace that velocity of change.
But I think the velocity of change has been going for quite a few years. The pandemic served as a pause and a distraction, if you'd like, and I think what we didn't realize was that that rate of change or the duration of change was tethered to just ongoing polycrisis. It just seems that the world is, you know, spiraling either out of control or it's becoming out of reach.
So there has been a convergence of a realization of climate change, of AI, of geopolitics. All of those kinds of things have been seen from a distance, but now we understand even sort of socio cultural changes, which are affected by things are now affecting businesses. So the world of work, the future of work, the flexibility, which then impacts what we're talking about today, kind of retirements, nest eggs, how you want to work, how you want to save the different demographics of the workforce.
All of those things are now starting to hit and impact businesses and if businesses keep going on a 20th century structure, a corporate structure that was designed for 20th century, not for a digital era, then we are seeing the problems and the conflict that we do within businesses today. So that's why we need to really, really keep up with where we're going and all systems are dying out at a rapid rate and we don't seem to address how fast the dying process is.
Blessing Utete: Dion, in our pre recording, you mentioned a concept that was very new to me. We probably know it in South Africa as something else, but you mentioned a group that people now refer to as ALICE, which stands for Asset Limited Income Constrained Employed.
You talk to us about this growing trend and the impacts of it both now and in the future.
Dion Chang: Yeah, it's a really worrying trend that you've seen come out from North America generally, but like you said, it's not new to South Africa in South Africa. We call it the missing middle, especially when we were discussing movements like fees must fall.
And we're looking at that missing middle. So ALICE is a global mirror of that, so these are people who have a job, they're employed, they are asset limited. So they do have assets, so they've got a car, they are employed but income constraint, meaning that can't afford to pay or no longer can afford to pay rent.
So they are forced to live in their cars and what we've picked up in terms of a global trend are churches and supermarkets opening their spaces, their parking lots to people who are classified as ALICE for the evening. So there will be public facilities that you can maybe have a wash or go to the toilet but you are safe and secure, but you know, come six o'clock when business starts again, you are obliged to move on. You can probably return that evening, but it illustrates a larger slide of people going into a gap of inequity. So you're still seeing bizarre things like a student in Canada who has lectures in Vancouver and is registered at the university, but lives in Calgary.
And it's cheaper for him because you can now do online lectures cheaper for him to fly to Vancouver several times a week. Rather than rent a place there, the economic models are starting to skew. So as I say, the math don't math anymore, and that's obviously going to have a huge impact on people's savings, how you retire, if you retire, can you retire, all of those questions.
Blessing Utete: Very, very worrying trend indeed. Next, we're going to listen to a clip about the changing world of work from PopTech, and then I'll ask you to share your thoughts on what you hear.
PopTech YouTube Clip: This world of information abundance, it's really defined on the one hand by this sense of being overwhelmed by constant communications and this constant flood of data and us having to cope with it.
And on the other hand, it's defined by the immense creative possibilities. So I think what we're seeing is. It's that the world of work is undergoing what I call a structural shift. How do we lead in this world? How do we create value? How do we organize ourselves, our organizations, our companies, obviously, to be able to generate value collectively?
How do we create a culture that allows for experimentation so that failure isn't punished? How do we budget in a world where we're changing priorities rapidly? How do we assign resources? How do we do management? There are so many challenges that people are slowly working through in this new world. The reality is I don't think enough organizations realize what's at stake here.
We see, right around the world, examples of organizations who have failed to change. And so I think a lot of this, change inside organizations is not about whether they're going to be successful or not. It's actually whether they're going to survive.
Blessing Utete: I mean, start with you, Bomikazi. What are your thoughts just hearing those clips?
Bomikazi Zeka: Yeah, I'm really hearing significant themes coming through, not just in terms of how the future of work is changing, but how it could potentially have a domino effect. The retirement landscape, we know that consumers are under significant financial strain, we're inundated with financial information and now having to find ways in which we can filter out the noise, organize financial information in a way that's going to improve well being.
This is particularly more interesting to those who are previously financially excluded, right? We've made significant strides in making sure people are financially included.
They have access to banking facilities, but there still has to be a lot more work that's done in terms of engaging long term financial planning and making financial information accessible and inclusive to everyone and this is where I think everyone has their part to play. The government, you know, the education system, retirement fund administrators, and even employers, especially in big business where we're seeing. A lot of emphasis being placed on ESG reporting, but this speaks to the S right in ESG, that social impact is needed to reform the way we think, the way we plan, the way we save for retirement and ensure that those who don't have access to the traditional modes of saving aren't left destitute.
Blessing Utete: Yeah, quite right there. Dion, your thoughts?
Dion Chang: Yeah, this is music to my ears and my daily grind, because this is what I'm trying, you know, I try and give these talks. I lecture at business schools to, to try and not convince people, but to really show how rapid the change is happening within corporate culture as well. I think said at the beginning that the pandemic was this watershed moment, and you are starting to see.
So I'll put another layer of what Bomikazi just said, it's not just the financial thing, but it's, it's that sort of socio cultural attitude towards the future of work. So we've done at Flux Trends, you know, sort of 15 years of, we've been tracking Gen Z.
So they are like fully into your, your workforce, now that's, it's a part of the major conflict between, Gen Z’s or otherwise millennial managers or Gen X managers or leadership and it illustrates a completely different way of working at a completely different way of looking at authority and a completely different way of looking at output.
So the Gen Z mantra before the pandemic was, “I don't want a job. I want a lifestyle”. The second one is “work is not a place I go to work is what I do.” Leadership then scoffed at that and said, well, ha ha, that's, that's, you know, it's just, how entitled can you be? And then post pandemic, we all saying, well, actually, you've got a point.
So we seeing this seismic shift that's happening and be driven by this generation and when people say, Oh, they, you know, we can't, we can't deal with, uh, with this generation, I always point out to them that the issues that this generation are fighting for within a corporate structure to change a corporate structure are not just for that generation.
They're fighting for the whole company, they're fighting for everybody in that to have those same flexibility is the same thing. So if you think of it, what I think most older leadership are used to is a very transactional way of time exchange in terms of work. You're the employee, I'm the employer, and you are my asset and I pay you for that time.
It's completely changed in terms of how do I fulfill the purpose? How do I nurture and, and grow? You as a person within that workforce and how do we make it all better? And because he, you know, really zoned in on one thing, which was mental health, and that was never, never discussed before and suddenly it is not only discussed, but it is, it is something that is recognized and something that we need to speak about.
Blessing Utete: You're talking really about dramatic shifts in terms of the employment patterns. Maybe let's, let's turn to now talking about this word of retirement, which you've mentioned a few times already. It's something
that younger generations are not really relating to/ And I think when we guys, you mentioned it at the start as a concept in, in many ways.
So perhaps we're talking life after formal employment or, or is a, is maybe a better term. What are your thoughts on this? Maybe Dion first.
Dion Chang: I have been looking or following a gerontologist called Ken Ditchwalt, and he wrote a book about what retirees really want life's third age, and that phrase life's third age really, really intrigued me.
And when I started looking into it, it makes complete sense. So life's third age, if you splice your life into three ages, birth to 30 developmental ages, 30 to 60, your professional, personal development, family, career, all of those kinds of things. And now? Turning 90 is no longer an anomaly, so 60 to 90 is life's third age.
Whereas again, all of the old algorithms and how you've worked out retirement is you retire at 60 or 65. So what on earth now do you do for another 30 years? Two decades of good cognitive ability, good physical ability, but they also different layers to that. So your retirement, I prefer to call it ewirement because that actually, as soon as you say to that to people, because people fear retirement more than they fear death.
So if you say, rather think of it as rewirement and you see the kind of the light bulbs go on around them. And so it's like, what do you really want to do? Because specifically the demographic that's starting to retire now are the same demographic that put the entire lives and personas into their careers. So once you take that away, they don't really know what to do and that hints at the huge fear.
Blessing Utete: Yoh rewirement. That's quite a term there. Well, because I mean, maybe just your thoughts on that, but also maybe if you can just touch on, is it going to be possible to have a, what we call a retirement in the future, what are we going to do around this reframing?
Bomikazi Zeka: Yeah, I think, you know, Dion has mentioned such excellent points that, you know, worldwide we're seeing populations aging and this is fantastic because it means we're living longer and healthier lives. But coupled with that, it means now our finances have to be long and healthy as well and so I think, you know, when we're having this conversation, it's such an interesting opportunity.
To think about the attitude towards retirement and the associations with come with it and while I was listening to Dion talking, I just remembered how retirement is always packaged, right? It's this older couple walking on the beach, holding hands, staring into the sunset, which is a beautiful thing, but it doesn't connect and resonate with everyone.
And so, you know, I think one of the key takeaways that any of the listeners should think about here is if that word doesn't resonate with you, or at least that that visual doesn't resonate with you, what could you substitute in its place? I think of it then as an opportunity to not just reframe the word retirement, but reframe what it is that you're imagining for your life, right?
That third age Dion was referring to earlier. A lot of people, because we're living longer and healthier lives, we're going to the gym as an investment in our physical and mental health but then, you know, planning for retirement is also an investment in your financial health. That if you start doing it now, it's something that's going to pay dividends in future and, and just undertaking that small shift in the way in which you think of it.
As an investment in your financial future can really shift the narrative around the world.
Blessing Utete: Yeah, I want to touch on some of your work that you do in the South African context where we've got employers that really provide these retirement arrangements and most employees are in there and that's all the savings that they do.
What does this mean for them? What we're talking about now reframing that ordinary South African that's in an employment provident or pension fund.
Bomikazi Zeka: This is the thing about, you know, coming off of the back of the COVID pandemic and seeing the great resignation where after COVID people just realized, hang on, you know, this job that I was in, it's not doing it.
Or this was a great opportunity for me to just reimagine what I want to do with my life since, you know, COVID had happened. And so we're seeing a really big shift in the way in which people see their engagement with the labor market, but also their engagement with their long term financial planning.
And what I think needs to happen here is maybe even a diversification in our thinking when it comes to, the traditional ways of saving because, you know, people have left their jobs, they're starting up that business that they've always wanted to start or, you know, re-imagining how they actually make money and earn their income.
And if that's the case, then we're seeing a gap in the market for this type of demographic, right? People who are looking for flexible work arrangements or maybe you want to save and are looking for more flexible saving structures and the kinds of financial products that would then service their needs.
And so there's absolutely a gap and I think even a missed opportunity to see how financial products are also catching up with how the future of work is shifting.
Dion Chang: Yeah. I just want to put an extra layer onto what Bomikazi has just said, is if you also stand back and look at what a career trajectory means to a younger demographic or younger generation compared to an older generation is completely, completely different.
For an old generation was a very linear one, you know, you, you go to school, you go to university, if you're adventurous, maybe you change your job to possibly three times in your career. And then, you retire, and then you go to where the birds go after that. Now, you're starting to see, you know, people look at a career portfolio.
You jump lanes between different disciplines and sectors, because now you're starting to see what the future of work, what you have studied, or what your skill is, is now applied to, to very different sectors that you never thought you would be able to get into and I'm very fortunate because I have a personal case study here.
My niece who lives in New York has done this. She has upskilled herself. She's in her thirties now, but during her twenties and early thirties, she upskilled herself three times, she kept changing lanes and doing things. So you take a small sabbatical, you go for further education, you get into the work, you have a side hustle, you have another little sort of mini sabbatical, you study something else and you build this career portfolio around you, which is completely, completely different to, okay, I'll work, I'll save and then this is going to be my retirement.
And that's what I do. So the work pattern itself for coming up generations, and we already started on generation alpha, which are the children of the millennials is going to be so radically different to what the corporate structures and financial services really, really allow for at the moment.
Bomikazi Zeka: This is exactly what I'm saying. And I'm so happy that Dion and I are on the same page because we're talking about shifts in terms of the future of work, where people are looking to upskill and reskill, but financial products aren't keeping up.
For example, if you leave your employer and you want to continue saving, you're probably going to put your pension or your provident fund into a preservation fund. But we know with that preservation fund, no ongoing contributions can be made, so then what are you going to do? Maybe take out a retirement annuity fund. Maybe you find another employer again, as Dion had mentioned, you change lanes and they have their own pension fund.
And so you're sitting with three different retirement products with three different structures. You're incurring fees across the board and they're not really working for you and so why are we still doing things the way in which they've always been done when in actual fact, they're not necessarily aligning with the needs of the consumer.
They're changing career trajectories because at the end of the day, the financial product is supposed to be there to support the financial needs and financially empower the employee. And so with this change in the future of work, we need to see a change in financial products as well to reflect the future of work.
Blessing Utete: I couldn't agree with you more innovation on the products because, you know, employment patterns are changing and the ways of earning income are changing. The ways of saving also need to follow and I was going to ask, you know, there are some people that I think the future is so uncertain. Is there a point in saving or investing for what we call retirement or rewirement or a third life?
Bomikazi Zeka: I'm going to be biased because you know, this is, this is my advocacy. Financial planning is such a personal undertaking, it's a reflection of your own attitudes, your values, your goals, and while we may not know what the future holds, there are so many lessons to be learned from the past. And Dion mentioned that COVID came along and showed us that even the most stable households can be financially vulnerable.
Irrespective of your start of saving or investing, there's still powerful tools in building financial resilience and providing a financial cushion to absorb any unexpected shocks. And truth be told, it's not something we talk about often, but You know, money can depress you or the lack thereof, you know, money causes stress, money causes anxiety.
It causes so much angst and shame, especially indebtedness that, you know, people find themselves in the debt trap, maybe even a victim of financial abuse and I'm going a little bit off topic here, but I'm really just trying to illustrate how something as simple as savings and being consistent in putting that cushion away can make a huge difference in terms of your financial and mental well being.
Blessing Utete: What does your research show about families in the future? Will more middle class families abandon the nuclear family and go back to more community living to support the older generations? Your thoughts and then we can go to Dion as well just to give us a view from his trends perspective.
Bomikazi Zeka: Yeah, well, you know, from the South African context and many places around the world, we're seeing the prominence of what we call the sandwich generation emerging. And that speaks to a generation of people who not only have to take care of their own children, but also have to financially support aging parents, aunties, uncles, whatever the case may be, which we know that, you know, puts finances under, under strain.
But within the African culture, I think it's very interesting to appreciate that your children are your retirement plan, right? There's no can disassociating your finances from your family because it's so deeply embedded within the value system of the African culture and what we're seeing in the research and I think it's so exciting to see that there's been a shift in the discourse around Africanizing financial planning and and what that means within the African context when the role of family is so intertwined with finances.
And so the needs of the family, just irrespective of what that family structure may look like, are being increasingly recognized in financial planning processes. So whether we're going to go back to community living or abandon the nuclear family from the South African context, I don't think so. In fact, I think what we're going to see is the recognition that families are part of financial planning structures, and we need to formalize that.
Dion Chang: Yeah, I just want to echo what Bomikazi said. So we did a small project just before the elections called the 30 30 30 project. So it was a very small sampling. We, we had 30 very deep conversations with under 30s, 30 years into democracy and one of the things that we found was that demographics were very open to leaving South Africa for opportunity.
But they would always come back when Bon McCloskey talks about that family bond that came through very, very strongly. Indeed on the other hand, if I put my trends hat on and just look globally now is the whole shift in, in social contract. So yes, you mentioned the change of the nuclear family.
There is a growing and growing movement around the world of a child free movement. So not a childless movement. So, so people opting not to have children because a it's too expensive.
But the world's just too crazy, I don't want to bring children into this and also see you just starting to see that there's also a very definite skew in emerging and developing markets where women are feeling more empowered and you can see this politically as well. There's a fork in the road. So younger women who are becoming more empowered, are voting more liberal and towards the left, whereas young men feel disempowered and they're voting more towards the right and conservative where this plays out in that family unit is going to be very, very significant because if you have delayed parenting already, if you're having a childless movement, then the whole structure of what Ramakrishnan was saying, it's very embedded in the South African culture.
But what happens when you have generations who have a borderless mindset and suddenly those things start dissolving and disappearing. So I'm talking deep in the future there, but there are things that we can start pondering about now.
Blessing Utete: We can't close without you just sharing your thoughts around trends in the over the next sort of 50 to 100 years, and also maybe from a South African context.
I mean, you've spoken about the ALICE grouping from a South African or an African context. Give us some thoughts around where trends are going in this vein.
Dion Chang: Okay, I'll start off wide and global as well. And just coming off of what Bomikazi just said is, you know, I'll put another generational skew onto that.
If you look at that lovely term, zillennials, so millennials and generation Z lumped into one, you work hard, you'll be able to buy a house and a car and then retire.
They've kissed that goodbye long ago. For those two generations, that's not going to happen. The world has shifted so dramatically, paying off things, student debt is another one.
I won't get started on that cause we'll be here for the next two hours on education, but on the one hand, you've got two generations saying they're not going to be able to do what their parents or their grandparents did because the world has changed. But then if you come to Africa and South Africa, so South Africa, obviously we've got a dual economy.
It's very, very complex, but generally if you look at the, the future of the African continent. It's a very, very young continent, i's a millennial Gen Z, very squarely Gen Z, and probably going to be a huge Gen Alpha generation. So if we get to the convergence of connectivity technology, we're going to see radical leapfrogs from this continent because they're going to do things completely, completely different.
Dare I say it, if you look at what's happening politically, you have older leadership that just refused to go. But in the next 50 years, in the next 10 years, that's going to go away or they will be pushed out and so you will start seeing radical changes happening on the continent. So I'm very, very happy that I live on the continent because that future is Is squarely, in my point of view, going to come from an African continent.
The youth demographic, compared to the aging demographics around the world, really sort of signals well for us. If we make sure that we invest in specifically the generation alphas, I think it's one in four children in South Africa. The gen alphas are under five, are stunted, that's not good. That's not going to give no economic growth for the country.
So we have to invest in the youth, in that generation already, while we also trying to invest in new ways of retirement or rewirement.
Blessing Utete: I'm going to go to our cornerstone question that we asked our guests and basically we're saying, you know, what do you think Bomikazi we haven't said about this topic today?
Bomikazi Zeka: One of the things I hope that the listeners will reflect on is really just interrogating our assumed knowledge the things we take as gospel when it comes to retirement and the financial implications that come with it but more than that to take inventory of your financial situation and have a look at where they may be chinks in your financial armor because even though you know life is moving at the speed of light.
We know we can't afford to be complacent with our finances and we really need to be intentional about aligning our financial plans with our financial goals. So whether you need to retire the word, retire, sit down and ask yourself, what does this word mean to me? What associations come with it? How do I reframe it?
So that, you know, I can use it as an opportunity to empower myself and and reconfigure my finances in terms of meeting whatever that future goal may be. Hopefully that this podcast provided the opportunity to do that.
Blessing Utete: Thank you. Dion, your thoughts? What haven't we said today?
Dion Chang: Okay. You gave me that window opportunity. So I'm going to take it and talk about skills and education because it is linked. I mean, if we're talking about the future of work and we're talking about sort of how that leads to, to retirement, then if I go all the way back to the beginning about kind of the skills for the future of work, then there's a huge, huge disconnect that's, that's happening here.
So specifically in a South African context, you have an emerging middle class where in many, many cases, you've got that the first person in that family to go to tertiary education to get that degree and the parents sacrifice everything in order for that person to be able to get the opportunities that they didn't have.
What we're seeing now is, and it's always a contentious thing, but it's one of my favorite topics is, is what is that degree worth? So, you know, it's been promised that, you know, you, once you get that piece of paper, the doors of opportunity will just be flung wide open and you're going to be sitting all cushy and then your future is secure.
However, we've seen from, you know, the pandemic was, was at late, so many things there is the final audit for the social grant, the relief fund. So to apply for a 350 Rand grant during the pandemic, the final audit came out that 800, 000 people in South Africa who had tertiary education all applied for a 350 grand grant, something is not right.
So, you know, when people say, Oh no, no, but you've got to have a degree, all of those kinds of things. We are starting to see around the world, but you're going to start seeing it in this office as well. The paying off of the student loans is not giving you a return of investment of what you're paying.
You are going to get and then if you layer onto that, the future of work is changing so fast, those academic ways and means of getting that skill. I'm not saying degrees are obsolete, I'm just saying for the future of work, they're not the be all and end all of it. So even the World Economic Forum is advocating micro credentials, short courses, which in a country like South Africa would level the playing field somewhat.
So they're short courses which are affordable, so Whether it's, it's age, gender affordability, it flattens the playing field and people are able to, they call it a digital backpack of skills. And for me, that makes the most sense,
not only in terms of return of investment of what you're trying to do, but also become employable because you have the sort of wide range of skills, which is what companies are going to start wanting very, very soon.
Blessing Utete: This has been an absolutely fascinating conversation. I've really enjoyed the conversation with both of you. So thank you for joining us today. It's been great having you.
Bomikazi Zeka: Thank you for having me.
Blessing Utete: Great. Dion, thank you so much. Always great hearing from you and the future trends. Thank you again for being with us.
Dion Chang: Great. Thank you so much for having us. It was a great conversation.
Blessing Utete: Three reasons why retirement savings are still relevant for your employees today and in the future. Firstly, according to Old Mutual's analysis, the two part system could enable workers starting at the age of 25 to build up retirement savings two to three times greater than those under the old system.
Secondly, the new legislation requires two thirds of retirement savings from the 1st of September 2024 to purchase an annuity, which will provide regular income after retiring.
Thirdly, employees can withdraw from their savings component annually without leaving employment, addressing the economic reality for many South Africans.
Reach out to us today to find out more about how we can help you ensure that your retirement fund members reach their best possible outcomes.
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