You must constantly monitor this situation. A guaranteed fund is a fund where insurance companies invest in the securities and investments they think will be able to provide a guaranteed return. It is a steady form of investment but they only issue the guaranteed growth at the end of the year after they have calculated the performance. Depending on the rules of the fund you may be able to switch to another fund where you could get better performance. You can request a copy of the rules from the life office that manages the fund.
Many people believe their fund values are affected when demutualisation takes place.
While this is not the case, you can phone Sanlam or Old Mutual and ask to speak to somebody senior about this. I believe the bull market that lasted until the end of 1998 convinced many investment managers the market couldn't drop. They paid less attention to defensive strategy and more to putting everything into shares that looked like certain winners. This is why some funds did not perform up to expectations. The quote is anonymous.