The National Pension Commission says it has transferred about N9.21bn to the Retirement Savings Accounts of 127,835 contributors of the Nigerian Social Insurance Trust Funds.
It said it was the total amount transferred to the beneficiaries’ accounts from the inception of the Contributory Pension Scheme to March this year.
The commission also said it processed monthly pension payments of N72.73m in respect of the 4,353 NSITF pensioners.
“This brought the total pension payment to the NSITF pensioners to N3.59bn from inception to the end of March,” it stated.
PenCom described the assets of the NSITF scheme as all pension fund assets that were to be transferred by NSITF to the trust fund following the commencement of the Pension Reform Act, regardless of whether they had been transferred to the custodians of the trust fund or not.
The Pension Reform Act provides that contributions into the NSITF scheme together with accrued income shall be transferred into members’ RSAs after the expiration of the five-year moratorium, from July 2009.
The Act also provides that PenCom shall supervise the transfer.
In 2010, PenCom amended the guideline, which seeks to provide a general guidance on how the transfer of the NSITF contributions into the RSAs of employees should be effected with the responsibilities of each stakeholder.
In the guideline, it stated that the NSITF should provide the database and other supporting records needed by the trust fund to establish the contributions of members of the NSITF fund.
It added that the trust fund would confirm the correctness of individual members’ contributions from the database.
In line with the provisions of the Pension Reform Act, the trust fund should create account for each member into which the contributions of members would be credited.
The commission also revealed that the total assets under the CPS rose from N5.3tn in December last year to N5.73tn at the end of June.
Pension Fund Operators Association of Nigeria disclosed that it made a profit of about N2.2tn from the investment of the rising funds in their custody from inception of the scheme till end of 2015.
The Director-General, PenCom, Mrs. Chinelo Anohu-Amazu, said the investment of the pension funds must follow the laid-down guidelines.
She said, “The pension funds are not idle but we don’t just give out money arbitrarily. The Pension Funds Administrators are the investors of the funds and PenCom regulates the investment.”
She said if any PFA invested the funds in assets not approved, the commission would know and could withdraw the operator’s licence or apply some other form of punishment.
More than a decade after the CPS commenced, the director-general said no fraud had been recorded in the scheme.
The commission said it had continued its consultative philosophy in regulating and supervising the industry.
It said, “The risk-based examination approach was implemented as a way of promoting transparency and providing early warning signals as well as encouraging pension operators to regularly self-evaluate their positions.”
PenCom gave the major issues observed from the review of the compliance reports forwarded by the operators during the first quarter of the financial period as un-credited pension contributions and delays in the payment of retirement benefits to retirees.
It also identified the failure to fill vacant top management positions by operators as an emerging issue.
The commission said it had sent letters to the affected operators concerning the issues and it was already receiving responses from them.
It added that some of the issues were raised with the operators during its site examinations.
