Efficiency of Pension Funds in Namibia

“I would recommend the DBA path to any person with the desire to exploit their true potential and to become globally competitive”. That is what Mr. Manfred Zamuee said after successfully defending his DBA thesis titled “Efficiency of Pension Funds in Namibia” at MSM on 20 March 2017.

The DBA was the missing link for Mr. Zamuee to take his consulting business to greater heights. His study focused on financial efficiency and determination of factors that drives organizational efficiency of pension funds. Despite the wide variation in performance levels, the research creates an efficiency frontier for pension funds and serves as a comparative performance management tool for trustees. Using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equations modeling, the study summarized organizational

efficiency in terms of issues associated with governance, compliance, ethics and operational efficiency. In this regard, the research confirmed the significance of non-financial criteria in the determination of pension fund efficiency. The study uses mixed methods to analyse data and reveals interesting findings about the efficiency levels of Namibian pension funds. Key recommendations were made in the study for improvement of optimization decisions by trustees of pension funds. This included review of investment policy, costs reduction strategies, skill development and managing conflicts of interests. The research was published in a series of five articles systematically dealing with the various methodological approaches using Namibian specific data.