Make pension savings mandatory for Jamaicans, actuary suggests
CHIEF ACTUARY at Actman International Limited, St Elmo Whyte, says the Government should make pension contributions compulsory for Jamaicans as security in their retirement.
Contributions to the national pension scheme is compulsory for employed persons, but compliance is below par, while private employers are not required to set up schemes for their workers.
The actuary said at the Sterling Asset Management virtual investor forum, in which he was a panellist this week, that there must be a way to make pension savings compulsory, but declined to say how it could be achieved.
Whyte was responding to a question posed by Marian Ross, vice-president of trading and investment at Sterling Asset Management and moderator of the panel discussion, as to what national policies he thought would improve the health of local pension and retirement funds.
Whyte said that when Barack Obama, as the president of the United States, achieved compulsory health insurance through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – otherwise called the ACA or Obamacare – he added a penalty to promote compliance. Anyone due a tax return but had not signed up for the ACA would see the penalty deducted from what they are owed.
“Nobody quarrelled with that,” he said. “I believe that the Government should look at some way to, in a most friendly manner, make pension become compulsory. There are many ways to do these things without it becoming offensive,” he added
The actuary also suggested that the Government improve the National Insurance Scheme, NIS, for the benefit of people at the lower end of the market especially, saying it could better supplement any pension they receive from the private sector.
Jamaica is currently studying the development of a micro pension system to boost retirement savings. It is the latest initiative to gin up savings towards retirement in a context where pension coverage is low.
At the state level, although the contributions are mandatory, payments into the NIS are said to be tracking at just 38 per cent of the employed labour force; while in the private market, just 10 per cent of the employed labour force contribute to a pension or retirement scheme.
The NIS, through pension fund manager National Insurance Fund, manages a portfolio of around $135 billion, or more, while private pension schemes hold assets of $700 billion.
Noting that the maximum pension payable to persons at retirement is 75 per cent of a retiree’s final salary, the actuary