No fewer than 9.7million workers from the private and public sectors have joined the new pension scheme known as the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) as at the end of June 2021.
This is the total number of workers whose employers have so far registered under the scheme and have their respective Retirement Savings Account(RSA) since the inception of CPS in 2004 till June, 2022.
Similarly, the pension fund assets have risen to 14.27trillion as at the end of June 2022 from a N2 trillion deficit in 2004.
Speaking at the ongoing 2022 Journalists workshop with a theme ‘Increasing Informal Sector Participation in the CPS: The Case For Micro Pension Plan,’ in Ikeja, Lagos, the director general, the National Pension Commission (PenCom), Mrs Aisha Dahir-Umar, said: “the value of pension fund assets under which I am pleased to inform you stood at 9,795,957million and N14.27trillion, respectively, as at June 30, 2022.”
To effectively manage this huge assets, Dahir-Umar, who was represented by the head, Corporate Communication, PenCom, Mr. Abdulqadir Dahiru, said the commission recently embarked on recapitalisation of pension industry in which the Pension Fund Administrators(PFAs) were required to increase capitalisation to N5billion.
According to her, “PenCom increased the Minimum Regulatory Capital (Shareholders’ Fund) requirements of PFAs from N1 billion to N5 billion last year. The recapitalisation exercise had a 12-month transition from April 27 2021, to April 27 2022. As of the deadline, all PFAs have complied with the commission’s directive to increase the Shareholders’ Fund from N1 billion to N5 billion.”
The reason for the recapitalisation exercise, she stressed, was to ramp up the capacity of PFAs to manage the increasing number of registered contributors, promising that, the exercise will bring about increased effectiveness and efficiency as well as improved service delivery in the industry.
Disclosing the strategic efforts of the commission to drive the Micro Pension Plan (MPP), she said, the MPP was conceptualised to expand pension coverage to the informal sector, including small-scale businesses, entertainers, professionals, petty traders, artisans, and entrepreneurs.
“The MPP was implemented to curb old-age poverty by assisting the workers, as mentioned above, to contribute while working and build long-term savings to fall back on when they become old.
“To create awareness of the Micro Pension Plan, the Commission, in collaboration with the Pension Fund Operators Association of Nigeria(PenOp), is currently championing an industry media campaign in major cities in the country’s six geopolitical zones,” she pointed out.
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