Sanlam: Poor performance: Be aware what you get into and the pitfalls!

My personal view and experience with Sanlam include: I took out a few retirement policies with Sanlam via PPS, when I was a student about 27 years ago via a few "advisors". After about 20 years I decided to stop my contributions due to pure performance. Sanlam and their advisors received their associated costs upfront and monthly. Every time I consulted with the advisor, they presented another chart with potential growth. None materialised. I changed advisors, because Sanlam is shielded by their advisors, you can't touch them? If anything goes wrong, they will tell you it is the market or speak to your advisor, this keep on looping back. no one will take responsibility for poor performance. No one can track their "home made" Sanlam price against the market. The price is determined in house and you can never determine or verify the price. They use this price to determine the value of your policy. I could not move my policies back then, as a 30% penalty fee will be applicable. In other words, technically they don't have to perform well or even outperform as you can't get out once you are in, you can only stop contributing. I just learned on the call centre that I am forced to use an external advisor, which will want to sign a mandate again and charge fees on my policy. Sanlam provides no policy advice from inside. The long and short is that I have to wait until early retirement or 55years, which is next year, move the policies and then run as fast as I can from Sanlam.

I made use of flexible alternatives with a much better return over the last 10 years. I would not recommend this company to anybody, my family and my friends know, stay away.