Big Business Insights: Retirement in an uncertain world

The post-COVID era has brought about significant changes in the workplace, introducing new work models, systems, and non-traditional income opportunities. This raises an important question: how will retirement look in a world where its traditional framework has evolved? 

This thought-provoking topic is the focus of this episode of the Big Business Insights podcast, hosted by Blessing Utete, Managing Executive at Old Mutual Corporate Consultants. Guests Doris Viljoen, Director of the Institute for Futures Research at Stellenbosch Business School, and Graeme Codrington, thought leader and founder of Futures Club, provide insights into the shifting retirement landscape. They examine the reframing of traditional single-employer pension plans, the influence of trends like job-hopping and the gig economy, and the rising importance of adaptability and individual responsibility in retirement planning. The discussion also tackles issues such as short-term financial thinking, the critical role of financial literacy, and practical steps for individuals and employers to build secure financial futures. 

Resources used in this episode:

Kiplinger.com: 6 ways retirement has changed over the past 25 years  

Bowmanslaw.com: South Africa working beyond retirement  

Businesstech.com: How much money you need to retire in SA 
 
iol.co.za: Plan your retirement early  

eNCA: Are South Africans ready for retirement?

Financial Bunny: You don’t need a retirement fund

Transcript

Old Mutual Corporate Big Business Insights Podcast Ep.6: Retirement in an uncertain world

Blessing Utete: Today, we're tackling a question that weighs heavily on many minds. Retirement. In the 1900s, it was simple, you worked for one company your whole life, and when the time came, they provided a retirement plan that carried you through your golden years. But times have changed. The traditional single employer funded pension needs a rethink.

Instead, we now face a complex mix of fragmented savings, rising healthcare costs, and longer life expectancies. Job hopping, freelancing, and the gig economy are the new norms. While these offer freedom, they also add another layer to retirement planning, we can no longer rely on a single pension. Our fi nancial futures are now a mix of different savings plans that require careful management, or at least they should.

eNCA YouTube Clip: South Africans are not prepared for their retirement. The purpose of a retirement fund is to replace an individual's income once they stop working, less than 6 percent of South Africans are currently able to do this. 

Blessing Utete: The insights paint a stark picture of challenges we face. Let's turn to actionable steps we can take to ensure a secure retirement. If hearing the percentage made you worry, let's channel the energy into helping you secure your future today.

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.

Today, we're focusing on retirement planning. Where it stands today and how it might evolve, especially for future generations like Gen Alpha, who could redefine how we approach work and retirement. We're joined by Doris Viljoen, director of the Institute of Futures Research at Stellenbosch Business School. Welcome to our podcast, Doris.

Doris Viljoen: Good day, Blessing. It's such an honor and a privilege to be here.

Blessing Utete: Thank you. We also will be gaining valuable insights from Graeme  Codrington, founder of the Futures Club. Welcome, Graeme.

Graeme Codrington: Hi, Blessing. Great to be with you.

Blessing Utete: Yeah, we're really delighted to have both of you join us today, and with your wealth of knowledge and experience, it's really going to be an exciting discussion.

You know, I'd like to hear from both of you, how has retirement planning really evolved over the past few decades? Maybe if we go ladies first, Doris, you want to take it away first?

Doris Viljoen: Thank you very much, Blessing. I think we are seeing over the few decades, and I mean, we have to also admit retirement planning is not that old. Although the idea of people getting older and would have to be cared for, but formal and formalized retirement planning is not that old, but what we are seeing are more sophisticated products, um, that, that cater for diverse needs. Things underneath more sophisticated management of those products and therefore a lot of jobs around the management of those requirements products.

But we also seeing a way more regulated sector that has to adhere to a lot of regulations and controls that may sometimes for the people on the inside feel frustrating but it allows for a lot of reassurance and security for people that have retirement funds that there is such a lot of regulation.

And in South Africa, I think we have a very well regulated retirement industry. Also, an increased awareness of the importance of retirement planning, I'm not saying that many more people are actually doing the planning or taking it serious. It's more or less like me in the gym, I know it's a good thing, but I don't necessarily go there so I think there's increased awareness that it should be something to be done.

The interesting things for me is the more openness to individualization and customization and increased democratization of the process where individuals can actively participate in their own planning. But we're also seeing a greater responsibility taken by government in the forms of providing grants for older people that may not have been able to do their own planning.

Planning for financial security and then maybe we're going to say something about stuff that has not evolved. Most of the products are still tightly tied to full time employment and a monthly payslip.

Blessing Utete: Yeah, very, very interesting and I think, you know, that, that evolution one only has to think 20 years ago we had these very paternalistic defined benefit funds, now a defined contribution is very flexible.

Graeme, your thoughts on how this evolution and what's happened over the last while?

Graeme Codrington: Yeah, I suppose I'll just pick up where Doris left off. I think she gave a very good overview of the industry but I think there's one additional factor, and that is what people actually want, because in the end, it's also driven not just by the regulations and the investment opportunities, which are shifting and changing and are probably as good as they've been, but there's also the consumer demand.

And I think, uh, the word you've just used is, is the word I was thinking would be the good one, and that is flexibility. And I think the, the younger a person is today, the less they are thinking, I'm going to retire, certainly not at 62 or 65 years old. And then in the traditional sense, you know, I've been full time working now I'm not working and retirement has to cover that.

So I think the demand for flexibility and therefore the demand for a variety of different products and instruments that can deliver that has been a driver and I think we'll continue even more so. To be a driver in the future, maybe even to the point where some companies might not even want to use the language of retirement, they might want to use the product and the packaging that you put it in and so on of long term investment and, and then an annuity income at a later stage, but whether we want to tie that to the cost concept of retirement or whether we just call it, you know, second half savings or whatever. I don't know what the language would be, but I think that there's certainly huge shifts and changes on the demand side as well.

Blessing Utete: I've certainly heard a new term recently called rewirement instead of retirement.

It's another, that second phase that you're talking about exactly back to you, Doris, not all companies offer a time and plans, but for the ones that do, do you get a sense that the provision today is sufficient for economic conditions today for individuals?

Doris Viljoen: I liked the word today that you are using their Blessing. That was a very smart use of the word because it's probably okay for today, but we are actually having to be okay for tomorrow and the day after and the day after and over the very long term, and that is where uncertainty increase and complexity is increasing. So I think companies try, and in the models that they build, the quantitative models, they play around with inflation, could increase and things, stuff that you can actually put into practice into a model and then play a little bit with if it's higher than this or if the exchange rate changes or something like that.

But we must also be kind to models and remember what the assumptions were that was built into the model. The model can only model what was put into the model and many models cannot really account for the real uncertainties and complexities that there is so I think companies try and we must then also look at those deep assumptions that we're making.

The going assumption is that yeah, if we are okay to ensure that we have about 70 percent of our current income will be okay for retirement. There are so many assumptions built into that thing. So, to be absolutely honest about the assumptions that we are building in, I think the one thing everybody does, not only people that are planning for the time and the minute they see a graph, they believe the graph and they don't ask questions about where it came from.

So I think asking those questions about what the graph is saying, but then more importantly, what the graph is not saying and I think people plan for that first purple carrot phase of retirement in people's minds, the one where you travel or you sit on a deck chair, something that more healthy bit of not working in a full time fashion anymore.

But many people, and they shy away, they don't really even want to talk about the chances of them requiring more care or having mobility issues and that that could be way more expensive than anything that you are planning for at the moment.

Blessing Utete: And I like what you said about, you know, the sort of 70 percent and how it's been crafted in that net replacement ratio and the fact that generally we almost look at everybody with one sort of lens and people's circumstances are very different.

And so that, you know, how that's modeled, people need to understand that it's modeled on a very average basis and not everybody equals that average. Graeme, so we know people changing jobs more frequently now, and this brings certain challenges to individuals coming to saving for retirement now. What are your thoughts around these changes that people need to support for retirement?

Graeme Codrington: Yeah. So at the risk of sounding like a really ancient old man, let me give you a story from the past and I say that having gone to a school recently where a little girl put up her hand and she said, so, sir, I've just got a question for you, were you born in the ones? And I like looked at her, I didn't know what she was talking about.

And she said, all of us here, we were born in 2012.  Were you born in the ones? And I realized, good grief, I'm not just from a different decade, I'm from a different century no, I'm from a different millennium from these kids. But I am old enough, just, just old enough, to have started work in the age when companies provided company cars.

I think I was just at the end of that, I certainly learned about it when I studied tax and we'd learned about all those car schemes and everything and the tax benefi ts and then in the 1990s, I was part of the corporate world when we were debating about whether it would give you your smartphone or whether you could, it was called BYD, bring your own device.

And now of course, we've got to bring your own devices, your laptop, you know, some companies issue, but other companies allow you to bring and we sort of had these debates about all these perks and benefits that end up not being perks and benefits. They end up being handcuffs and jail cells. And I wonder if now to answer your question with that context whether the younger generations are going to come in and look at some of the financial benefits could even be medical aid as well, but then any other insurance.

And then, of course, life savings, now we understand why the companies in the background would want to consolidate that, I mean, they get the benefi t of consolidating only dealing with a single point of entry via the employer they get the scale, etc, etc.

So we understand why the industry would want these things grouped by company and corporate, but again, I don't think a younger generation really cares about your internal systems and controls and benefits. And we'd rather say, I would much prefer a portable retirement system that I can move from job to, it's my retirement after all.

And it's my policy and it's my plan and it's my money so either, you know, make it portable or just give me the money and leave me alone and I'll sort it out if I can.  And so we've got to move away from a, at one level, it could be paternalistic mindset. We doing it because you won't do it if we just give you the money and the other one is the lock into the system. But I think the future, the 20 thirties and forties has to be that this is something that's linked to the person, not the employment.

Blessing Utete: And I suppose we probably starting to see the evolution towards that. I mean, the two pot system that's just coming now with the retirement pots that people keep in the fund.

Those are going to become portable, people will be able to carry that throughout multiple employment relationships. So I think that you certainly spot on Graeme, I think that's probably where we're going to land up with maybe employers just having the core chassis of giving the ability for individuals to save for retirement.

Graeme Codrington: Unfortunately, though, if I can just jump in on that, I think the two pot system is going to push our thinking back just a little bit because I think that people having spent a lifetime being stuck are going to actually probably make the mistake of, of just seeing a nice pot of money that they can get now.

And that's going to sort of prove the point of the more conservative fund managers to say, yeah, you see, if you give people the opportunity to spend their money today, they will. There's a few choppy waters coming in the next few months, but after that settle down and those who wanted their money have taken it.

I think you're right. You know that this is part of pushing the industry to flexibility and portability for sure.

Blessing Utete: Yeah, and maybe on that same vein, Doris, this talks about these alternative savings options that are available and individual retirement accounts or investments, you know, what role are they playing in today's retirement landscape?

Doris Viljoen: I think exactly like Graeme mentioned now, they should become increasingly important because the reality is, I mean, a few decades ago, people started employment with one employer and retired 40 years later from the same employer. And a lot of our retirement thinking is still around that kind of model.

But in reality, if we speak to large employers, I mean, the churn rate at the moment, um, runs between four and six years, even recruitment people. If they see that you've been working somewhere for a long time, they wonder whether you are a little bit slower, so I think in the reality of what is going on in the world, we need to adapt, but also in the minds of the people that are making them.

And I'm not going to use the word retirement just because that's what we've been using but we need a new word a new innovative other word for next phase other phase and I mean even second half doesn't say it because you're probably going to have a second and a third and a fourth and a sixth and seventh, we're going to have multiple phases throughout our lives of different levels of economic activity and our saving for every next and further phases should adapt to that kind of model and on the individual side the person making the plans for those that longer older age kind of phases of life I think important would be to have sort of pockets and you can shape the investments to suit the pockets but but in your mind. You have to have multiple pockets, not just one big bundle, because I think if we have this one big bundle concept, we make those less wise decisions.

So if you have bundles or pockets in your mind, a big one for the day to day stuff, whatever your next economic activity could be at a next age phase, because I think that kind of thinking would help us to start crafting and seeing more mature spending decisions once we reach those next and older phases, and it will help with the mental prep in our minds that is required for it.

Blessing Utete: And Graeme, you know, with the context that Doris has just painted now and we know that employers become quite a big conduit for some of the savings that are there for retirement. How would an employer change their or adjust their plans for this kind of future? What would be your thoughts on what should be happening around these retirement schemes that we have with employers?

Graeme Codrington: I mean, that's the million dollar question, I think, is how do you adjust an industry which by nature is designed to be conservative and sort of should be. The whole point is it's invested in long term assets with long term returns and that's really what we all bought into. But now you're asking it to be flexible, nimble, adjustable.

It's almost an impossible ask. And so I think in reality, it's going to have to happen slowly over time and probably you're going to have not necessarily the existing systems massively shifting, but probably new entries coming in. So like the banks are seeing the fintechs and the cryptos coming in and the people who come from those industries always talk big games about replacing the existing system and it never happens. But they add an additional element that was missing and I think that's probably the most likely solution here if we're talking investment strategy, and i'm not an investment advisor, but from what Doris was saying, if you've got these different pots in your head, well, then maybe you've also got different investment vehicles as a, as someone who's planning for this.

So you might have this legacy system that's there because that's the system you bought into, and it's very difficult to unbundle it, but then you might want to add something that is a little bit more flexible so that core, give me bread and milk for the last 30 years of my life, that sort of done the more conservative way.

But then that pot for the fun pot and Doris, I was thinking that there might be a fourth pot and again, this is unfortunately going to show my age. I'm discovering I'm in the sandwich generation, I'm in my fifties, I was expecting to only have to deal with myself right now, but my parents who are much healthier than they thought they would be living much longer than they thought they would.

This whole system hasn't worked out well for them because they actually thought they'd be dead already. And so the inflation hasn't kept up and anyway, there might be a fourth pot of, I'm still supporting my parents while I myself am also retiring. What a world. And nobody pictured that coming.

Blessing Utete: And your children now also stay with you.

Graeme Codrington: Well, let's not talk about that's why it's a, maybe it's a sandwich generation. Yeah, I'm stuck in the, in the middle of this and so I think that the fl exibility is probably not going to come from a massive reorganization of the industry as is, but from new additional options that come in and employers are going to need to be the ones who are more flexible to say, Sure, we can put some of what you do into the traditional pot, but we'll also give you some of it to be a little bit more flexible.

So probably not an industry shift as much as an employer shift and then certainly a personal shift in our behavior.

Blessing Utete: Doris you want to come in here but as you come in the real challenge though is that you want to have these pockets of your money of
savings as you've suggested but at the moment people aren't even contributing enough in the retirement funds that they have with the employers.

How do they then have multiple pots if they're not making you know adequate use of the current structure?

Doris Viljoen: I think it is a mindset thing. It's not just South Africa. Across the world, people are suffering from short termism and immediate pleasure rather than longer term or, or things so first a mindset thing, but when Graeme was talking now about caring for parents and things like that, I think the conversations have to happen with employers, but we as families, extended families have to have these conversations and I sense a real hesitance of having, everybody knows that it's important and we should be having these conversations.

And Graeme, I'm pretty much in the same boat than you are contributing to parents and things and even, I mean, having those conversations and saying, okay, but what's going to happen next if you need even more care, they just don't want to talk.

And we should also be talking about our needs without, or even though we think we're planning enough to just open the conversation so that when the conversations need to be had, it's not a weird topic. We should actually be having those conversations throughout our lives and not just two years before it hits us in the face kind of thing.

Blessing Utete: And I think that's really the concept of, of planning ahead, really. I mean, it is about having those continuous conversations and refl ecting where you are and what you, what you've got, that's essential. We're going to listen to a clip now from Nicolette Mashile, a well known voice in the South African fi nancial landscape.

And then I'd like to get your thoughts on this clip.

Financial Bunny YouTube Clip: That is why I always say you do not need a retirement fund. You need funds in retirement. And this is not to say that. Your retirement annuities, your pension funds, your, um, provident funds are not good enough. They are good enough. They're just not enough and that's the reality, you know.

Blessing Utete: They're just not enough. That statement is enough to send chills down the spine of anyone who's currently working on saving for their retirement. Graham, what's your take on this clip?

Graeme Codrington: Well, I mean, I think she's right. We are living and the big answer is we are living at the end stage of capitalism. In my opinion, we're living at the end of a 3 400 year section of history where actually the system isn't working, and I could say I said capitalism, but I could have said communism if we were living in a different country because it's the same. All of the systems are not working.

And I think the reason is, it's the same reason for all of them the very rich, and by the very rich, I mean the nought point, nought nought 1%, you know,
there's the haves and the have-nots. No, it's the haves and the have yachts at the moment and the have yachts have taken way too much out of the system and there's no actual middle class anymore.

The middle class was supposed to be that you, if you work hard, you had enough money to also live well and then you could be finished your work and spend a little bit of time not working and it would all work and it isn't working. I think we've got to look at this with very big eyes and say the system's broken.

So if you're a 60, 70, 80 years old, it's very cool for you if, if the stock market is hitting historic highs and everything, because you are in the. extraction phase of the economy. But if I'm a 22 year old, I don't want to see record stock market highs, I'm buying, I want to see lows. I want to see stock market at the lowest possible with the future of growth coming.

And we've got this massive generational divide sitting in the world where it's the extractors at the end of their lives that are making all the decisions that are strip mining the economy and the system and leaving devastation behind for younger people. Sorry to sound passionate about it, but I really am.

That we then can't turn this onto individuals and say, well, just do better. We've actually got to be safe. Sensing that we are at a moment in history that requires structural change to the systems now, you ask the question, what should we do about it? Well, uh, now that's again, a big question that's diffi cult to answer, but I think we've got to start with the realization.

It's not going to fi x itself with just working harder, saving more. There's got to begin to be structural changes and maybe the young people who are saying, Hey, your system isn't working. Maybe they're not arrogant or lazy. Maybe they're right. And, we should listen to them more.

Blessing Utete: Thanks, Thanks, Graeme. Doris, your take?

Doris Viljoen: I think I'm going to plead for both and to change the big structure and have a similar serious and critical assessment of why the big things are not working. It's not, not working just for multiple phases and people getting older. It's also not working on many other levels as well. So we need that critical assessment of the systems and pushing it to change.

But we as individuals must also do stuff this this report that was recently published, the 10x retirement reality report and there was this interesting survey with very interesting results where only about eight percent of people indicated that they have a thought through plan for the latest stages of their lives.
I'm totally agreeing with Graeme. We have to question the system, but we have to do that sort of from both sides. Individuals must make plans and have a say otherwise, we're just critiquing the system, but we're not starting to say, but we would rather have this or we want input. So individuals making plans and putting pressure on the system, but also from system size. We have to change things.

Graeme Codrington: I actually agree with you completely there that yes, of course, we look at the system and we say it needs to change. But on the other hand, we also need to say systems don't change quickly. Yeah and so if you are 25, if you are 35, 45, even, you can't just say, oh, well, the system's broken therefore, I opt out of the system.

Unfortunately, whether you like it or not, you're in the system. Yes, let's change the system but what if it doesn't change? Then you don't want to be caught out by the system either so it is a both end you  spot on. I agree with that.

Blessing Utete: Absolutely. I think you're right about the fact that systems take time to change.

I mean, the pension funds act we have now was what? 1956 it was, and we've only just recently had the most signifi cant changes with what's coming through now that have happened in 23 and 24. So it does take a long time to change the system and I think individuals do have to think about what do they do in the current context of what we have.

Graeme, so you started to go there, you know, what do you think retirement will look like for Gen Alphas?

Graeme Codrington: I don't think they will have retirement. I think Doris has already suggested there will be multiple phases. I like the concept, if it was possible to almost view your career from the beginning as not something that has a start and then an end, but is more like cycles and circles.

So you might go to varsity in your early twenties and study to be the first thing you are, let's say a lawyer and then you're a lawyer for 20, 30 years. And then you say, well, that was fun and you maybe retire a little bit, you take one of that. What, what did you call it? Doris, the fun pot.

And you go and spend a few years traveling and all the rest, maybe in your late forties and early fifties, because why leave that till when you're so old, you can't enjoy it. And then why not even go back to university in your late forties, early fifties and do the next thing and I think once society begins to realize there isn't a straight line from beginning to end.

That's not a prediction, by the way I mean, that is already the reality we just don't talk about it much, once we realize that, I think we could set ourselves up for something else. And maybe even, like, we know the gig economy concept. Why don't we do that now? For more high paying jobs and more professionals where maybe you even two or three things at once.

Why do we have to see employment as essentially we don't have to be locked into one employer only for all of the time we prepared to sell for employment. I mean, that is the dumbest decision you'd ever make as an investment, all your eggs in one basket, but that's what almost everybody does with their employment.

Why would we do that? Why couldn't we be employed three days a week with one employer and two days a week with somebody else in a different industry? I think the gig economy for grownups, if I can call it that, might be part of the future as well, but I certainly don't even think the concept of retirement will be in the heads of today's young people.

They'll have a very different picture of career and lifespan in the second half of the century.

Blessing Utete: So Doris, then, you know, what does retirement planning look like in the world of work that Graeme has just painted, you know, flexible work, the gig economy, the advances in technology, what does retirement planning look like then?

Doris Viljoen: I think I want to just step one step back to the gig work thing because I'm extremely passionate about different forms of Economic activity. I even shy away from using the word job or work kind of thing because we're so stuck mentally on what a job is or should be just like what Graeme explained now.

I've just recently completed a really big piece of research on the potential futures of gig work in South Africa and one of the big things are that gig workers on any level, and we're seeing exciting moves exactly what you're pointing to Graeme on higher levels, engineers on gig bases a while ago in Boston at an innovation center where venture capitalists and people get together to do pitches.

I heard the term fractional executives and in the VC world, they use fractional executives and oh, that's my next career. I want to be a fractional executive that sounds really cool but at the moment, in terms of retirement planning, gig workers have to plan and provide for themselves because they are mostly excluded from any retirement plans.

The people that provide gig work or provide big opportunities do not include  any benefits like saving for retirement or anything like that. So they have to do it themselves this emerging fi eld, I think, provides a big opportunity for the providers of retirement planning options. So I think there is a big fi eld there, but they have to shift their minds like Graeme said now because most of those vehicles are looking for a monthly pay slip and gig workers and some people in small business contracting year doing their kind of thing.

They don't have a monthly pay slip, but they do have income and we're seeing a few products on the market emerging. We need way more and then talking about the thing that could infl uence retirement going forward, we've already touched on that. I think a big thing that we don't really account for enough is aging.

I think we have a very young society, so we're looking young, young, young, and we're missing this. significant trend of how many people within our population may reach the age of 80 and beyond going forward. At the moment we've had a steady increase and all of us know somebody that had an 80 years or 85th birthday.

And at the moment we have about half a million people in South Africa that are older than 80, but that's going to double in the next decade and our systems are already not ready for that many older people and Imagine just doubling. Where does it go? Who carries that load off that many people off 80 and older?

And I think we have to be very innovative about that because such a massive and fast increase creates a lot of critical mass over a really short time. And as an entrepreneur, that makes me very excited because that means there are opportunities there.

Blessing Utete: I really like that, Doris. I mean, we don't have to be rigid.

We really have to think out of the box and really stretch ourselves to embrace. This new world of work and retirement or whatever we're going to call it. Then I want to get to a close now and maybe as we get there, I just want to get from both of you. Let's go to Graeme. What do you think we haven't said about this topic today?

Graeme Codrington: Is retirement even going to be a thing? We've sort of said it. A little bit and we've said the world is changing and the systems are changing and we've said that retirement funds or maybe old school and not keeping up and we've said that maybe people are going to change their view of the world of work, but I mean are we dancing around the elephant in the middle of the room here?
Will we look back and say well that used to be what we did? This concept of retirement and now we don't do it anymore and it could be that the young generation who are being born right now? It just won't exist for them as a  concept It'll be something they learn about in history books because if Nicolette was right in that clip that we paid If you never are going to be able to put enough into the retirement funding that means the only way you can deal with that then is you work longer, right?

So then you delay that retirement you delay the onset of needing the funds and if we're starting to do that, well, then at what point does that then catch up with your actual longevity?

Blessing Utete: Thank you. Doris your, your thoughts on what we haven't said?

Doris Viljoen: I think a big big question and that counts for the 20 year old and the 80 and the hundred year olds is a big redefi nition of how much is enough.

I think as responsible consumers and producers and users of resources on the earth, I mean, we are already overburdening the earth in terms of the number of resources that we are using. The earth cannot replace the natural resources that we use on an annual basis. So I think living more responsibly could also have a positive knock on effect on potential planning financially and otherwise for longer and further stages of your life but that redefinition needs to start way earlier.

Blessing Utete: What food for thought to come to a close. Thank you very much, Doris and Graeme for sharing your insights so generously. I really appreciate the time. Thank you, Graeme, thank you very much. Thank you, Doris.

Doris Viljoen: Thank you, Blessing. It was nice to speak to you.

Blessing Utete: These are uncertain times for employers and employees alike. As someone who employs people or makes employee benefi t decisions within your company, helping to improve employee fi nancial wellness is an opportunity to do good in the world. Start small. Here are three ways to help your employees boost their financial futures.

Firstly, encourage employees to set clear savings goals, whether it's for a rainy day, retirement, or a major life purchase. Slow, consistent, and steady wins the race. 

Secondly, help employees improve their financial literacy. For example, are there ways that they can make their income work harder? Perhaps a good place to start is automating savings or allocating small portions to different accounts.

Lastly, by investing in healthy habits, employees will be more likely to build both fi nancial wellness and overall well being. At Old Mutual Corporate, our integrated wellbeing solutions can help your employees make the most of their earnings now and into the long term.

With tools like RightTrack, Smart Salary and the Financial Wellbeing Program, you can empower your employees to manage their financial and physical health more effectively. Reach out to us to learn more.

If you enjoyed this episode, please like, follow, and subscribe. For practical tips, be sure to sign up to our monthly newsletter. We'd like to hear from you. Share your experiences, questions, or even challenges with us on social media. Thank you for listening. Until next time.