The management of StanbicIBTC Pension Managers Ltd. on Thursday said it has since inception in 2006 paid over N261 billion to retirees in the country.
Oladele Sotubo, Executive Director, Investments of the pension managers made the disclosure during the first edition of the 2017 Stanbic IBTC Regional Employers’ Forum in Benin-City with the theme “Partnering to Deliver Excellent Pension Administration Services”.
Sotubo who also disclosed that the financial institution has over 1.5 million retirement savings account holders nationwide added that its assets under management are in excess of N1.88 trillion.
He further revealed that the institution paid approximately the sum of N1.8 billion to over 44,000 retirees monthly.
While noting that the contributory pension scheme has sustained a rapid growth since it was introduced in 2004 added that the National Pension Commission (PENCOM) records indicated that as at December 2016 about 7.3 million people have registered for the scheme representing about 10 percent out of the estimated 180 million population.
Sotubo who pointed out that there are still a lot of work to be done to increase the number of contributors to the scheme in the country appealed that everything must be done by all and sundry to sustain its the growth.
He said the growth of the scheme would not only to the benefit of employees but also to create economic prosperity for all as well as ensure that contributors enjoy some level of comfort while in retirement.
He said the forum which was among the first seven event to be organized this year would hold in cities such as Lagos, Abuja, Port-Harcourt, Ibadan, Kaduna and Enugu respectively.
Sotubo posited that essence of the forum was to increase participation by more Nigerians in contributing to pension scheme, to engage actively with employers on the importance and impact of their role in pension administration and the retirement process.
He listed areas to engage employers on to include helping their workers have retirement plans through the opening of retirement savings accounts and regular remittance of their contributions.
In his remarks, Salihu Bwala, Head of Enforcement in Compliance, PENCOM who said the contributory pension scheme has in the past 10 years make a lot of success pointed out that assets under management was in the region of N6 trillion.
Bwala also added that since the inception of the scheme there has been no major incident of fraud.
He however attributed low level of participation by Nigerians as one of the commission’s major challenges especially by the private sectors.
He described as not encouraging the 7.3 million people that have so far registered for the scheme in the country out of the population of about 180 million Nigerians.
Bwala further disclosed that over N12 billion have so far been recovered from various defaulting employers as well as instituted court cases against a lot of them.
