Momentum has moved its retirement age from 60 to 63 for all its employees, and it announced this in one sentence from its pay committee, on page 137 of its annual report. Some of its sales staff now go to 65. Nowhere does the report say why.
Momentum owns Metropolitan Life and Multiply, is worth R51 billion on the JSE, and is the latest big financial group to leave 60 behind. It did not get there first.
Nedbank moved everyone, Standard Bank moved the top floor
The banks went first, and not all in the same way. Absa already retires people at 63. Nedbank took every permanent South African employee from 60 to 63 last year, after a review of what its peers and the wider market were doing. Standard Bank did it for its executives only, from January this year, which brought them level with everyone else there, who were already at 63.
So Momentum's change looks more like Nedbank's than Standard Bank's: everyone moves, not just the people at the top. And 63 is not the ceiling. Capitec and Investec already retire people at 65, and at Investec that line is close: chief executive Fani Titi turns 65 next year.
The banks also put their reasons on paper. Hubert Brody, who chairs Nedbank's remuneration committee, told shareholders that retiring South African staff at 60 "has disadvantaged the group in a highly competitive market from a talent attraction perspective". Standard Bank said its change meant it was "not an outlier" in a highly competitive market for key talent. Business Day had reported that Standard Bank's old limit for executives was said to have counted against it when it tried to keep Kenny Fihla, a respected banker then in his late 50s. Fihla went to Absa as chief executive.
Three more years at the top
Momentum's own chief executive is the clearest case of who gains. Jeanette Marais is 58 and has run the group since 2023, the first and only woman to lead a large listed life insurance and asset management group in South Africa. At 58, the new rule is roughly the difference between two years left and five. In what Business Day called a breakout year, the R7 billion earnings target her 2024 strategy set for 2027 was reached a year early, and her pay rose to R45 million, from R35.3 million.
A later retirement age does not keep everyone, though. At Standard Bank, chief executive Sim Tshabalala and finance chief Arno Daehnke are still set to retire at the end of next year, and the change does not apply to them. Tshabalala, who has led the bank for more than 13 years, turns 60 then. At Momentum the same three extra years went into the annual report without a word of explanation, and they apply to the chief executive as much as to anyone.
