Friendly Societies Benefits

Friendly Societies help individuals and their fami-lies prepare for a range of life events, such as educa-tion and training, funeral and retirement. Friendly Societies offer a range of products – rang-ing from education, saving plans, funeral plans, income plans, etc – to allow individuals and their families to plan for the future with confidence. In a Friendly Society arrangement, members typi-cally pay a regular membership fee and hold regu-lar meetings. If, for example, the Friendly Society’s objective is to cover medical costs, and a member or beneficiary become sick, they would normally re-ceive an allowance to help them meet their financial obligations, or if the Friendly Society’s objective is to cover funeral costs, when a member dies, the ben-eficiaries will receive an allowance to cover funeral costs of the deceased member. The membership fees and investments made by Friendly Societies are managed by the managing committee of the Society to give the members ben-efits in time of need. Pensions, sickness payments and marriage and death grants are all benefits that could be offered by Friendly Societies. In order to register a Friendly Society, the grouping involved must draw up a set of rules governing the operation of the Society. The rules must, according to the class in which the Society is to be registered, as a minimum contain the matters to be provided for in terms of Section 13 of the Friendly Societies Act, 1956.