The position of principal officer is a statutory designation. It is the equivalent of the public officer companies were required to have in terms of the old Companies Act. The principal officer is essentially the physical embodiment of the intangible legal person, the pension fund. As such the principal officer has a limited number of statutory duties:

• Signing of certain documents, together with a trustee/ chairperson of the board of trustees, furnished to or required by the Registrar;
• Furnishing of additional particulars required by the Registrar in relation to a rule amendment;
• Submission of rule amendments and consolidated rules to the Registrar;
• Sign the prescribed certification of the valuator's report together with the trustees and that the report was sent to every employer participating in the fund;
• Submit to the Registrar under cover of a letter signed by him, the annual financial return of the fund;
• Sign any appeal to the Minister against a decision by the Registrar and lodge with the Registrar;
• Be the correspondent of the Registrar with regard to matters relating to the fund;
• Execute any function assigned to him in terms of the rules of the fund;
• NAMFISA requires the principal officer to sign off the SIH and ERS returns funds are required to submit on a quarterly basis.

In terms of the definitions to the regulations of the Pension Funds Act, "principal officer means the principal executive officer referred to in section eight of the Act who may be a member of the body administering the fund." There is a separate definition of 'person managing the business of the fund', in the Namibian context this is typically the board of trustees and not the principal officer.

And that's it as far as the duties and responsibilities of the principal officer go. Unless the engagement of a person to serve as principal officer requires the person to provide other specialist services, a principal officer does not need to be a specialist.

From our experience, employers are increasingly moving the administrative burden of their pension fund to the fund itself as the result of increasing regulatory demands on funds. It is thus the administration of the pension fund business not attended to by the fund administrator and other service providers for which funds nowadays require additional resources. This covers liaison between the employer, the fund and service providers on administrative matters. The technical matters requiring expertise that funds would normally require are generally covered by the mandate of one or the other fund service provider.

Where a fund employs an independent principal officer, it must ascertain that there is neither a gap nor an overlap between the mandate of the principal officer and that of the consultant and this is not an easy task as both functions are not well defined in our industry and differ from one service provider to the next.

Trustees are often not clear about their expectations and the roles of the principal officer and the other service providers. These funds end up either with another cost layer and confused roles of their service providers, or with a principal officer that assumes the function of the consultant.

The approach should thus be for funds to clearly demarcate up front the boundaries between the role of the principal officer the consultant and the administrator to avoid gaps and overlaps that draw the trustees into arguments and mediation between different service providers and make it difficult to place responsibility.

Important notice and disclaimer
This article summarises the understanding, observation and notes of the author and lays no claim on accuracy, correctness or completeness. Retirement Fund Solutions Namibia (Pty) Ltd does not accept any liability for the content of this contribution and no decision should be taken on the basis of the information contained herein before having confirmed the detail with the relevant party. Any views expressed herein are those of the author and not necessarily those of Retirement Fund Solutions.