Documentary evidence including wrong bio-data and inclusion of individuals who were never employees led to the collapse of a 15-year court battle between TelPosta Pension Scheme and retirees, the administrator now says.
Nearly 1,000 former Kenya Post and Telecommunications Corporation and Telkom Kenya employees have lost the more than a decade-long legal battle over the computation of their retirement benefits.
This is after the High Court upheld the TelPosta Pension Scheme’s method of calculating pension payouts.
The judgment, delivered by the High Court in Nairobi on July 27, 2026, dismissed Judicial Review Applications No. E061 and E376 of 2025, bringing to an end a dispute that began in 2011, over claims that hundreds of pensioners had been underpaid after leaving employment during Telkom Kenya’s restructuring.
Justice William Musyoka ruled that the applicants had failed to prove that the Retirement Benefits Appeals Tribunal (RBAT) acted illegally, irrationally or unfairly when it dismissed their claims in October last year.
Instead, the judge found that the tribunal had thoroughly examined the evidence presented by both parties before concluding that the pension benefits had been computed correctly under the scheme rules.
“The applications were appeals disguised as judicial review,” Justice Musyoka ruled, noting that the High Court’s role was to review the legality of the decision-making process rather than reconsider the merits of the dispute.
The retirees had argued that the trustees unlawfully applied actuarial discounting and reduction factors that significantly reduced their lump-sum and pension benefits after they exited employment between 2004 and 2007.
However, the tribunal heard extensive testimony from the scheme’s witnesses and professional actuaries before rejecting those claims.
Speaking during a briefing on the court outcome and the scheme’s future, TelPosta Pension Scheme Administrator and Trust Secretary Peter Rotich said the case ultimately turned on documentary evidence and the ability to demonstrate how every member’s pension had been calculated.
Evidence presented by the TelPosta Pension Scheme showed that several of the calculations relied upon by the applicants were based on inaccurate information.
According to the scheme, some of the claimants’ actuarial reports included members of the separate TelPosta Provident Fund and treated them as if they qualified for monthly pensions, despite the provident fund only providing lump-sum benefits.
The tribunal was also told that some individuals included in the claims were not members of the pension scheme at all, while others had retired before the TelPosta Pension Scheme was established in 1999 and therefore could not benefit from the disputed pension arrangements.
The scheme further challenged the actuarial report relied upon by the retirees, arguing that it used a six per cent annual revaluation instead of the four per cent provided for in the scheme’s trust deed and rules.
It also said the report relied on incorrect member data, including inaccurate dates of birth, employment records and salaries, leading to inflated benefit calculations.
Some retirees were also found to have already received part of their retirement benefits after leaving employment.
“The strength of our case was that we took the tribunal through the computation of benefits step by step using actual member records. We also brought independent professional actuaries who confirmed that the calculations complied with the scheme rules and accepted actuarial principles,” Rotich who is the CEO said.
He said the applicants’ actuarial report was undermined by the use of incorrect member data and assumptions that were inconsistent with the scheme’s governing documents.
The administrator added that some retirees had been led to expect benefits that exceeded what they were legally entitled to receive.
“The tribunal established that there were members who had already received part of their benefits when they left employment, yet the actuarial report assumed they had received nothing. Naturally, that produced exaggerated pension figures,” he said.
The dispute first reached the Retirement Benefits Authority (RBA) in 2011 after pensioners challenged the computation of their benefits.
In 2012, the regulator ruled that the scheme had calculated the benefits correctly in accordance with the trust deed and the retirement benefits laws then in force.
Although the matter later proceeded to the Retirement Benefits Appeals Tribunal and eventually the Court of Appeal, which ordered a fresh hearing, the tribunal again dismissed the retirees’ claims after reviewing fresh evidence from both sides.
The ruling secures the position of the TelPosta Pension Scheme, a closed defined-benefit scheme managing assets worth about Sh14 billion and paying roughly Sh1 billion annually in pensions to more than 7,000 beneficiaries.
Rotich said the trustees would continue safeguarding members’ retirement benefits through prudent investment management, transparent administration and strict adherence to the scheme’s trust deed and rules.
