About Robson Savage

Who and what are we?

We are registered with the Financial Services Board as a retirement fund administrator in terms of the Pension Funds Act.

We are a fund-servicing company, originally formed in September 1995 as a division of African Life Assurance. In April 2000 we became an independent company following a friendly breakaway in which the full client base (with their specific agreement), staff, systems, procedures and data were transferred to Robson Savage.

There are no links between Robson Savage and any other company or entity – all shares are owned by the staff of the company. Information about our directors is provided below.

Our clients are corporate in nature, usually retirement funds, trustees or companies, or combinations of these.

Our offices are in Houghton, Johannesburg from where we service a range of clients across the whole of South Africa.

What do we do?

Professional fund services provided are threefold:

• Fully comprehensive administration of funds and plans
• Advice/consulting on all aspects of retirement, death and disability benefits for groups, primarily for employed staff
• Actuarial services allied to or arising from the above.

Although our core speciality is the administration of retirement funds, we service a variety of other consulting and technical needs arising from the financial aspects of employee benefits.

We administer a large number of funds. Our experience ranges from the smallest of arrangements, with only a couple of members in an umbrella arrangement, up to independent funds with many thousands of members.

As an additional service arising from our fund work, we are able to provide professional financial planning advice to individual members as and when this is appropriate.

What don’t we do?

Services not provided include:

• Asset management
• Underwriting of group life assurance, group disability insurance, or any other insurances or risk benefits

… although it is part of our service to give solid and truly impartial advice and do thorough market testing to assist trustees/clients in the optimum placement of each of these features amongst the universe of providers of such services.

What about experience in the team?

The existing staff complement of 30 persons includes one actuary and four Financial Planning Institute (formerly Ilpa) qualifications (one is a dual qualifier) in addition to the expected tertiary education qualifications and a wealth of experience.

A variety of external companies provide us with support services in the running of our business, with almost all non-core activities successfully outsourced.

What makes us successful?

Key success factors include all of the following:

• A clear understanding of what it is that the customer really wants, and how far short of this most providers in the market are falling. We subscribe to simple, well thought out processes and methods, designed and run by people who have the experience and ability to get the job done.
• Total independence. The company is 100% owned by management and staff. Objective advice and service are therefore quite unfettered by shareholder or other pressures.
• The quality, extent and flexibility of the staff and systems, capable of simply and efficiently managing every need that can be imagined for any benefits structure.
• The principle of unbundling all the components of the benefits programme, optimising value for each one in isolation and reassembling the components into a cohesive whole for easy consumption by employers, trustees and members. (Off-the-shelf packages from a single overall provider are extremely unlikely to deliver best available value for money!)
• The absence of any other hidden costs and expenses. We practice total disclosure of charging structure components, giving clients confidence in the arrangements we put in place.
• Low overhead costs in a lean, efficient organisation.
• Competitive fees in relation to the top quality professional services provided.

Robson Savage has put itself on the map at a time when many existing providers are failing to give service at anywhere near the levels required by customers, and yet are charging ever-greater fees.

What about our systems?

We have state of the art systems, fully owned by the company, that have been developed over many years by in-house IT staff in conjunction with the administration staff. The result is the following:

• A user friendly system that administrators understand and trust
• A system that can make fast electronic payments to members
• A system that can receive and process data in any format that suits the client.

Who are our directors?

The company’s directors are:

• Neil Savage , Managing Director. Qualified actuary, with 25 years’ experience in the industry. Before joining African Life in 1995, he was an executive director of Fulford Brothers Benefit Consultants, and also worked at Swiss Reinsurance and Liberty Life.
• Paul Robson , Executive Director. Double Fellow of the Financial Planning Institute, in both Life and Pensions. Over 30 years’ experience in the industry. Previous employment includes lengthy periods with Alexander Forbes and Old Mutual both in South Africa and Zimbabwe.
• John Farrant, Non-executive Director. John is a director of companies, trustee of trusts, and private financial adviser to individuals of high net worth. He is a former partner of Ernst and Young.