Fleshing out the vision for a better model

Introduction

In this section we paint the picture of one highly successful country programme around savings that appears to tick all the boxes for promoting fiscal responsibility, self-sufficiency, social mobility and social protections. Our example is the Central Provident Fund of Singapore. We flesh out exactly what has made this programme such a success and ask serious questions about whether there are aspects of it that could work in South Africa. We believe there are. We spend Part 2: Fleshing out the vision a better model describing exactly why saving for housing, education, health and risk protections is very much on a par with saving for retirement – more because of what they contribute to social mobility than what they offer as a social protection. We show how employers could facilitate the inclusion of these savings priorities into a broader employee benefit offering.

Most important, though, we show that when individuals try to solve for these lifetime savings imperatives as separate savings challenges, our chances of success on all counts are fairly low.