The Director-Common of the Nationwide Pension Fee (PenCom), Omolola Oloworaran, has said that the following frontier of ongoing pension reforms is focused at over 75 million casual employees in Nigeria.
She made this disclosure on Monday on the govt launch of Awabah, PenCom’s pioneer Accredited Pension Agent, at an occasion attended by BusinessTimes.
The launch comes days after the Fee introduced that it had licensed Awabah as the primary Accredited Pension Agent (APA) for enrolling contributors beneath the Private Pension Plan, marking a brand new part in Nigeria’s pension reform journey.
What they’re saying
Oloworaran stated Nigeria’s pension system has made important progress however stays skewed towards the formal sector, leaving hundreds of thousands of employees uncovered.
She defined that the following part of pension reform should give attention to closing the hole created by the nation’s predominantly casual economic system.
“Based on the Nationwide Bureau of Statistics, over 93 per cent of our workforce is casual — greater than 75 million individuals,” she stated.
She added that this casual workforce powers Nigeria’s economic system each day, but most of them retire with no financial savings, pension, or security internet.
“This hole isn’t solely a social problem; it’s a nationwide vulnerability. Closing this hole is the following frontier of pension reform,” she added.
“And Nigeria isn’t a proper economic system. That leaves a niche that we should shut.”
“Accredited Pension Brokers like Awabah symbolize the way forward for pension distribution.”
“This isn’t nearly retirement financial savings; it is usually about jobs and financial alternative,” she stated.
She famous that with pension property exceeding N27 trillion and greater than 10 million Retirement Financial savings Accounts, the system has achieved scale, however largely amongst salaried employees.
Based on her, Accredited Pension Brokers will function the bridge to markets, villages, motor parks, farms, and workshops by leveraging know-how to achieve casual employees nationwide.
Extra insights
Stakeholders on the occasion highlighted the broader financial implications of increasing pension protection past the formal sector.
The CEO of BusinessTimes, Ugodre Obi-Chukwu, in an interview, argued that non-public pensions, previously often called micro-pensions, can play a crucial function in capital formation whereas offering long-term safety for casual employees.
- “Micro-pensions, now often called private pensions, are a vital side of capital formation within the economic system,” Ugodre stated.
- “Aside from the truth that you’re pulling capital from the largely casual market, you’re additionally making a buffer for them, particularly after they retire,” he added.
- “After we began Awabah, we had been pushed by a single thought: that no African employee ought to be one mishap away from poverty,” Awabah CEO Tunji Andrews stated.
Each audio system agreed that PenCom’s determination to license early innovators resembling Awabah alerts a powerful regulatory intent to combine casual employees into Nigeria’s pension and capital formation ecosystem, whereas additionally strengthening social safety.
What you must know
PenCom has just lately intensified reforms geared toward enhancing entry, effectivity, and belief within the pension system.
- One in every of such initiatives is the introduction of a brand new digital platform to modernise pension administration and scale back limitations for contributors.
- PenCom rolled out a self-service on-line platform known as the Knowledge Recapture Self-Service Platform (PENCAP).
- The platform permits Retirement Financial savings Account holders to replace their biodata and biometric data remotely by means of a safe portal.
- The initiative was developed in collaboration with the Pension Fund Operators Affiliation of Nigeria and licensed Pension Fund Directors.
Based on the Fee, these reforms are designed to enhance knowledge accuracy, improve service supply, and assist its broader push to carry extra Nigerians—particularly these within the casual sector—into the pension system.
