The imperatives of having a retirement account

At retirement, after years of work, one is faced with increased expenses to cover exotic vacations, medical bills, family events and other bills.

At that point, the size of retirement benefits payments applied to address these rising costs would largely have depended on how well your investment managers performed over the years.

To address this shortcoming, experts have advised that employees open an RSA early in their career. A Retirement Savings Account (RSA) is a defined contribution plan required under the Pensions Reform Act 2014. It can be opened by every employee in an organization with three staff or more.

Staff will be required to open and maintain a personal Retirement Savings Account (RSA) in their own names after which they would be issued a unique Personal Identification Number (PIN) by the National Pensions Commission.

Monthly deductions and remittances ranging from 10 per cent of total monthly salary are contributed by the employer and employee respectively into the RSA.

The overall aim is to ensure that upon retirement, loss of job, invalidity or death, employees under the scheme would have access to some income through the various pension options.

Funds under the scheme are invested on behalf of the contributors. Our Retirement Savings Account (CPL Value Fund) has consistently provided superior returns (relative to competition) on investment for all our contributors for the past eight years.

In line with regulations governing the administration of the Pensions industry each employee covered under the scheme is expected to complete an RSA registration form from a PFA, which will be forwarded to the National Pension Commission (PENCOM) for the generation of a unique Personal Identification Number (PIN).

According to Crusader Pensions Limited which is among the top Pension Fund Administrators (PFA) in Nigeria, the employee subsequently, is expected to submit the PIN to the company’s HR/ finance department for the purpose of making monthly remittance.

A Registration Certificate containing Personal Identification Number (PIN) and Account number plus a welcome letter is issued to the employee for retention.