PenCom Net Pension Assets Stand at N17.292tn

Ebere Nwoji

The National Pension Commission (PenCom), has said that the net asset value of pension assets currently stands at N17.292 trillion as against over N2 trillion pension deficit hanging around the pension sector before the advent of the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) in 2004.

The commission said the above figure was the total fund accruing from pension contributions in the country under the CPS as at August 31,2023.

The commission said this represents a significant growth of 15.34 per cent when compared to the N14.99 trillion figure of accumulated pension assets as at December 31;2022.

PenCom disclosed these at an interactive session on the Contributory Pension Scheme for the Organised Private Sector (OPS).

Speaking at the session, the Director General PenCom, Aisha Dahir-Umar, told members of the OPS that the pension industry was one of the fastest-growing financial sectors in Nigeria. 

According to her at the end of the third quarter of 2023, the number of RSAs under the CPS stood at 10 million and the size of the pension Asset Under Management amounted to N16.76 trillion. 

“The Commission has continued to take giant strides towards ensuring the smooth implementation of the CPS through the revision of existing regulations and guidelines and the development of new ones. Specifically, the commission deployed the Enhanced Contributors Registration System (ECRS) for the pension industry. Following, the deployment of the ECRS, the Commission also introduced the Data Recapture Exercise (DRE), which mandatorily requires all RSA holders who joined the CPS prior to the 1st of July 2019 to update their information with their respective Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs). Accordingly, the commission has consistently urged RSA holders to approach their PFAs for data recapture”.

She said in order to facilitate the implementation of Section 13 of the PRA 2014, which allows an RSA holder to transfer his/her RSA from one PFA to another at least once in a year, the commission developed and deployed the RSA Transfer System (RTS) in 2020. 

According to her, the RTS is a computer-based application for initiating, processing, and monitoring the RSA Transfer process. It also ensures the seamless transfer of RSAs from one PFA to another. Amongst others, the PenCom DG said the opening of the RSA transfer window had continued to improve the quality of service delivery by the PFAs.

She further said PenCom, in order to ensure that RSA holders own a house during their work life, had released the Guidelines on accessing Retirement Savings Account (RSA) balance towards payment of equity contribution for residential mortgage by RSA Holders. 

She told the OPS members to recall that following the enactment of the PRA, the Commission was saddled with the responsibility of supervising the transfer of the Nigerian Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) contributions of employees into their respective RSAs under the CPS. 

“To date, contributions worth N10.20 billion have been transferred to the RSAs of 142,486 NSITF Scheme contributors. Thus, in order to ensure that all contributors under the NSITF scheme have their NSITF contributions transferred to their RSAs, the Commission had severally featured advertorials in National Dailies requesting NSITF contributors to apply for the transfer of their contributions. 

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