‘Why pension transfer window hasn’t been opened’
The hope by some Retirement Savings Account (RSA) holders who may be dissatisfied with their Pension Fund Administrator (PFA) and would want to change their PFA will not happen this year as earlier anticipated.
Except something drastic occurs, even the guidelines for the transfer window may not be exposed this year as earlier promised by the National Pension Commission (PenCom).
Both PenCom and pension operators, at separate fora, had assured that the guidelines for the transfer window would be released this year after the corrupt RSA database had been cleaned up and the biometrics of RSA holders done.
The data cleaning exercise from earlier projections should have been completed by now, but checks at PenCom done by our correspondent showed that the exercise is still ongoing.
In this last quarter of the year, the guidelines are not ready and may not likely to be ready this year, a top source at the PenCom told our correspondent under condition of anonymity.
Section 13 of the Pension Reform Act (2014) specifies that an employee may, not more than once in a year, transfer his RSA from one PFA to another.
Some contributors who are dissatisfied with the quality of services rendered by their PFAs are yearning for this provision of the law to be activated by PenCom.
Industry watchers also contend that opening the transfer window would deepen service delivery in the sector as PFAs would no longer be complacent.
The top PenCom staff argued that if the transfer window is opened with the current state of the RSA data, there would be chaos.
According to him, until the data is completely cleaned from multiple registrations and the biometrics of all contributors done, the transfer window would not be opened.
The Chairman, Pension Fund Operators Association of Nigeria (PenOp), Mr. Misbahu Yola told the Daily Trust, “There are challenges with the transfer window that require some resources. PenCom is about to request for a proposal on it so we have made some progress, at least. But we need to resolve the biometrics before the transfer window takes off. The issue of identity is the main reason why the transfer window can’t take off, but much progress has been done.”
Yola admitted there are some multiple registrations and PenOp is working at correcting such anomalies so there would be no confusion. “There is no other motive as to why the transfer window has not been opened other than to get it right” he maintained.
PenCom has asked operators to send in all their data to address the multiple registrations, which created issues of PIN issuance at PenCom at the initial stage of registration. Now, PenCom is working on modules that will integrate all those data from the operators so the data can be cleaned up..
On the timeline for the data cleaning and biometrics completion, Yola replied it would be difficult to give a time frame now, but assured that the datacleaning exercise should be completed by the end of October.
He described the biometrics as critical because the biometrics of RSA holders will be captured as a unique identity rather than as a signature, as it was done in the past.
He explained that the major reason the data cleaning exercise seemed to be happening late was that some 10 years when the Contribution Pension Scheme started, the emphasis was just to take off properly. Even then, registration, he added, was still done on pager. The next step now is to capture it electronically.