Pension scheme subscribers up by 3.6% in 2020 -PenCom

The National Pension Commission (PenCom) has disclosed that the total membership of the pension Schemes increased by 3.6% from 8.95 million in December 2019 to 9.3 million in December 2020.

This is according to the Commission’s recently released 2020 Annual Report.

Growth in the industry is said to have been triggered by factors such as an increase in the level of compliance by the public and private sectors owing to steps taken by the commission to improve compliance and coverage, as well as enhanced market penetration and strategies deployed by the PFAs.

According to the report, membership of the Retirement Savings Account (RSA) dominated the total Pension Scheme memberships at 9.2 million, representing 99.40%, while the AES and the CPFAs accounted for the balance of 0.60%; which is made up of 40,951 and 14,926 members respectively.

Similarly, the growing acceptance of the Micro Pension Plan by the informal sector as of year-end 2020 pushed the total membership count to 62,463.

The report also said RSA registrations increased from 8,891,236 as of 31 December 2019 to 9,215,788 as of 31 December 2020, representing a growth rate of 3.65% or 324,552 in absolute terms.

The total pension contributions remitted into the RSAs of employees in both the Public and Private sectors in 2020 according to the report increased significantly from N700.69 billion recorded in 2019 to N908.09 billion as of 31 December 2020, which indicated a 29.60% growth over the reporting period.

While aggregate pension contributions revealed that the Public Sector (i.e. FGN, States and Local Governments) accounted for N536.97 billion during the year. This represented a 61.95% growth (year-on-year) when compared with the N331.56 billion recorded as of 31 December 2019. (Nairametrics)