The cheapest retirement annuity is the one with the lowest all-in fee on the fund you were going to buy anyway. It is not the provider with the best advert, and it is not automatically the name people say is “low cost”.
On the schedules I could verify on 15 October 2026, a SatrixNOW retirement plan holding a cheap index fund is likely to cost less than 10X on a balance under R1 million. The catch is that the two fees are not quoted the same way. This page shows the addition, so you can finish it from the factsheet instead of from a slogan. What an RA is, and the tax deduction, is covered in the RA guide.
Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. This information is for educational purposes only and should not be considered as financial advice. Always do your own research and consider seeking advice from a qualified financial professional before making any investment decisions.
The only number that counts
Ask for the effective annual cost, the EAC, on the fund you will actually hold, at your balance, for a 10-year term. It rolls up administration, the fund’s investment charge, advice, and other costs. A provider that quotes a 0.30% admin fee and hides a 1.5% fund fee is not a 0.30% RA.
If they will not give you an EAC, add these yourself:
- Administration fee, including VAT.
- The fund’s total investment charge from the latest minimum disclosure document. Not the TER from 2019.
- Advice fee, if someone is taking one. A 0.5% advice fee is real. It compounds for 30 years.
- Any fee on a two-pot withdrawal, if you think you might use the savings pot.
A 1% gap is not small. On R500,000, 1% is R5,000 this year, and the same gap applies to every future contribution and every year of growth. The index fund piece has the long version. The short version is that you cannot save your way out of a 2% RA.
Two schedules, read properly
SatrixNOW retirement plan
SatrixNOW’s retirement-plan cost profile, dated September 2024, charges an administration fee of 0.30% excluding VAT. Including VAT that is 0.345% a year. There is no minimum deposit and no recurring-investment fee. Transfers in and out are free on that profile.
The fund’s total investment charge is extra. The profile says to read it on the minimum disclosure document. I am not going to type a TIC from memory and call it current. Open the MDD for the specific Satrix fund you would hold, add that percentage to 0.345%, and you have a comparable annual cost before advice.
A two-pot savings-pot withdrawal on this profile costs 0.5% excluding VAT of the amount withdrawn, taken before tax. That does not change the annual fee. It changes the cost of using the pot. The tax on that withdrawal is a separate, larger number, covered in the two-pot withdrawal page.
10X
10X publishes one annual fee, including VAT, on its retirement annuity page. Trading costs are on top, and those are also including VAT.
| Investment value | Annual 10X fee, including VAT |
|---|---|
| First R1 million | 1.04% |
| Next R4 million | 0.81% |
| Next R5 million | 0.58% |
| Above R10 million | 0.40% |
Trading costs of 0.12% to 0.18% a year apply on top, depending on the fund. On the first R1 million the published all-in is about 1.16% to 1.22%, before any advice fee. Their own example on that page puts the estimated annual fee at 0.88% on a R3.2 million balance, which matches the sliding scale. The fee gets kinder as the balance grows. It is not a 0.4% product at R80,000.
So which is cheaper?
Compare like with like. 10X has already bundled administration and investment management into the 1.04%. SatrixNOW has not. You still have to add the fund.
| If the Satrix fund’s TIC is | SatrixNOW all-in, including 0.345% admin | 10X on the first R1 million, including trading costs |
|---|---|---|
| 0.20% | about 0.55% | about 1.16% to 1.22% |
| 0.40% | about 0.75% | about 1.16% to 1.22% |
| 0.70% | about 1.05% | about 1.16% to 1.22% |
| 1.00% | about 1.35% | about 1.16% to 1.22% |
A cheap index fund inside SatrixNOW is the lower-fee RA on these numbers. An expensive actively managed fund inside SatrixNOW can cost more than 10X, because you picked the fund, not because the admin fee was high. The platform does not save you from the factsheet.
Above R1 million, 10X’s own fee starts falling. Rerun the sum at your balance. Do not use the first-million line for a R4 million transfer.
The other names, and the trap
Sygnia and Allan Gray are the other two people ask about. I could not pull a current public fee schedule from either site on 6 October 2026. Their pages blocked the check. Do not let this article, or an advert, fill that gap with a remembered number. Ask each for the EAC on the specific fund, at your balance, with VAT included, and put it next to the table above.
The expensive RA is still the old insurance contract: an upfront commission, a penalty for stopping contributions, and an investment menu of the insurer’s own funds. Modern unit-trust RAs do not work like that. If a quote leads with “your first three years vest slowly”, you are not looking at the cheap product. You are looking at a distribution contract. The RA guide goes through that trap in more detail.
Fees are not the only input
A cheaper RA that you never fund loses to an expensive one you actually contribute to. That is not an argument for paying 2%. It is an argument for picking the cheap one and then ignoring it, on a debit order, for a long time.
- The tax deduction is the same shape everywhere: 27.5% of the greater of remuneration or taxable income, capped at R430,000 for the 2026/27 year. The cap rose from R350,000 in the 2026 Budget. The provider does not change the deduction. SARS does.
- Regulation 28 applies to all of them. You cannot hold a 100% offshore equity ETF inside an RA and call it a loophole. Use the RA for the regulated slice, and a TFSA or a normal account for the rest, if that is the split you want.
- The two-pot rules are the same. One-third of new contributions to the savings pot, two-thirds locked. A low fee does not make a withdrawal smart. The tax on a withdrawal is larger than any admin fee on this page.
- Service matters when you transfer in, or when a directive goes wrong. Cheap and unreachable is a real failure mode. It is still cheaper than 2% and unreachable.
A simple order of work
- Decide the fund first. A low-cost balanced index fund, or a simple Regulation 28 mix, is the default. If you want to pick funds yourself, SatrixNOW’s menu is the point of that platform.
- Add admin, TIC, and advice. Write the three numbers down. If you cannot find the TIC, you are not done.
- Compare that total with 10X’s published fee at your balance, plus 0.12% to 0.18%.
- Get an EAC from Sygnia or Allan Gray only if you have a reason to hold their fund. Curiosity is not a reason to pay an extra 0.5% for 30 years.
- Set the debit order. Revisit the fee once a year, not the performance every Friday.
If your employer already contributes to a pension or provident fund, fill that match before you obsess over 0.2% on an RA. Free money beats a fee comparison. The pension, provident, and RA comparison is the page for that decision. This page is only the bill.