[01] Manfred Rii Zamuee, The Research Department, Maastricht School of Management, Maastricht, the Netherlands.

This research uses Data Envelopement Analysis (DEA) to measure and evaluate the relative financial efficiency of pension funds in Namibia. The study conceptualizes financial efficiency as the ability of pension funds (Boards of Trustees) to convert (through decision-making) inputs (contributions and expenses) into outputs (member fund credits and investment returns) in a manner that maximizes these scarce resources (Davis, 2005). The DEA model used for the study is input-based and expense driven and hence assumes input reductions whilst holding outputs constant. The study conducted a desktop survey of 79 registered pension funds with the Namibia Financial Institutions Supervisory Authority (NAMFISA), representing 100% of the Namibian private pension fund industry. The reseach findings reveal that most of the Namibian pension funds are operating below the efficiency frontier set by the efficient peers. Furthermore, the efficiency results also indicate that Namibian pension funds have relatively low efficiency scores compared to Kenya and Australia. This finding not only highlights the importance of efficiency in the management of pensions funds in Namibia, but richly contribute to the current literature on the use of DEA as more reliable tools to measure pension fund financial efficiency.

Financial Efficiency, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), Pension Funds, Investments, Costs

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