A provident fund is different to a pension fund in that you are able to withdraw the entire savings amount as a lump sum when you retire.
Government is intending to align the benefits of provident funds to those of pension and retirement annuity funds. This means that provident funds will ultimately be essentially identical to pension funds.
The result is that you will only be able to withdraw a third of your provident fund savings as a lump sum upon retirement, while the rest has to be invested in an income or annuity fund that pays you a monthly income.
However, this legislation has not been applied and has been postponed until March 1, 2021.