Industry must follow Wierzycka's lead and oppose prescribed assets - IRR
27 February 2024
The IRR welcomes the strong stance taken by Sygnia Ltd CEO and co-founder Magda Wierzycka against the ANC's reheated attempt to raid the pensions and savings of South Africans to pay for the failures of government.
From 2019 to 2020, the IRR led the charge against the ANC's prescribed assets policy – one now reintroduced in the party's 2024 election manifesto.
Flagging the threat of prescribed assets early in 2019, the IRR immediately launched a campaign to halt the policy. The form of this campaign was straightforward: we put a simple question to South Africa's largest financial and asset management companies: were they willing to hand to the government money their clients had entrusted to them? Whatever the rationalisations of some in the industry, this is, after all, what the result of a prescribed assets policy would be.
Says Hermann Pretorius, IRR head of strategic communications: "We came in for a lot of flak, with news media and the financial sector accusing us of stirring panic. However, as we doubled down on our efforts to stop the policy, sector insiders, contacting us covertly, alerted the IRR to the fact that negotiations between sector leaders and the Presidency to implement prescribed assets had been under way for months. We upped the pressure on the industry by prompting the public to join us through a letter-writing campaign in putting similar questions to their own financial services providers. Soon, the pressure began to tell.