Experts list reasons why some retirees cannot access their pension

Pension Fund Administrators in the country have said inconsistent personal information and duplication of data are making it difficult for some retirees to access their funds.

According to the Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs), and managers of the fund, some retirees have inconsistent personal information and duplication of data, making it difficult to ascertain correctly that they are the true owners of the funds.

Paddy Ezeala, a pension and environmental consultant stated that some of the account holders are discovered to have registered with more than one PFA, meaning they have more than one Retirement Savings Account (RSA) PIN Number.

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Ezeala says other reasons could be inconsistent data, particularly date of birth, residential address or bank account numbers, which according to him, would be a problem at the point of accessing the money, except the intending retiree moves ahead to clear those doubts.

“I remember an RSA holder telling me he had a PIN number in his former place of work, and when he changed job his new employer insisted he belong to the same PFA with other staff in the company for ease of remittance, and ignorantly he went to open an account with a new PFA.

Jumoke Adeolu, a staff of one of the PFAs advised that in order to ensure that these challenges are not experienced by participants in the scheme, the National Pension Commission (PenCom) in 2018 directed all RSA holders and retirees to update their bio-data, particularly the National Identification Number (NIM) and Bank Verification Numbers with their respective PFAs.

PenCom in an advertorial said, “The Federal Government of Nigeria has made it mandatory that every Nigerian must have a National Identification Number (NIN).

To achieve this, all data generating organisations have been directed to harmonise their database with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), whose mandate is to implement the National Identity System in Nigeria.”

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To enable the pension industry to comply, PenCom therefore directed all PFAs to update the records of their clients. Consequently, all RSA holders, both active and retired, were advised to approach their PFAs to provide their NINs and BVN as well as their other mandatory bio-data information.

Peter Aghahowa, head, corporate communications at PenCom, said, “We are aware of these issues and that is why we are appealing to contributors to provide their NIN and their BVN numbers with their PFAs so that we can reconcile the information we have.”

Again in 2019, PenCom issued a revised guideline on data recapturing and it read: “In line with Section 5.3 of the Revised Guidelines on Registration of Retirement Savings Account (RSA) holders (2019) issued by the National Pension Commission (the Commission), Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) are mandated to undertake a Data Recapture Exercise until the last RSA holder existing on the Contributor Registration System (CRS) is recaptured.”

The guideline required all PFAs to obtain complete and accurate data of their Retirement Savings Account (RSA) customers (both active and retired) in line with Section 23(e) of the Pension Reform Act (PRA).