N594.43bn retiree fund invested in bonds, banks, others – NBS ...Males double females in 7.98m RSA membership

A total of N594.43 billion in Retirement Savings Accounts (RSAs) of retirees under the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) has been invested in bonds, banks, treasury bills and other securities.

The Pension Assets and Membership Data for the first quarter of 2018 released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed that the bulk of the RSA retiree funds were invested in local money market securities, banks, corporate debt securities and corporate bonds.

Retiree RSA funds constituted about 7.5 per cent of the N7.94 trillion total pension fund assets under the CPS as at first quarter of 2018.

Data analysed by Daily Trust showed that N70.31 billion, being the highest amount of investment from retiree RSA fund, was invested in local money market securities and this was followed by N61.90 billion invested in banks.

Pension fund investment guidelines issued by the National Pension Commission (PenCom) require Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) to invest RSA retiree funds in less risky securities considering that the fund owners are already in retirement unlike active RSA funds that can be more venturesome in terms of investment risks.

Data analysed showed that PFAs invested over N37.59 billion each in debt securities and corporate bonds during the period while ordinary shares and Federal Government securities got investments worth N7.12 billion and N4.56 billion respectively.

A broader look at the N7.94 trillion pension fund assets show that Federal Government bonds had the highest weight percentage of 48.61 per cent of the total pension fund assets, closely followed by treasury bills with 20.89 per cent weight and domestic ordinary shares with 9.25 per cent weight while agency bonds have the least with 0.07 per cent weight as at the first quarter of 2018.

The NBS report showed that 7.98 million workers were registered under the pension scheme at the end of the first quarter this year compared to 7.82 million registered workers in the last quarter of 2017.

Data analysed showed that males dominate the membership of the 7.98 million RSAs domiciled in PFAs and this may be a reflection of the dominance of men in the workforce.

Males constitute 5.64 million of the total RSAs while women constitute 2.33 million in both the private and public sectors.

From the Federal Government’s end, males double females in RSA membership, accounting for 1.41 million RSAs while females account for 525,930.

In the private sector, males triple the number of females in RSA membership, accounting for 3.35 million RSAs out of a total of 4.46 million RSAs while females account for 1.11 million RSAs.

However, there seems to be some fair representation in state’s total RSA membership of 1.59 million as males account for 889,185 RSAs while females account for 696,466. Age analysis of RSA membership also showed that young workers dominate the contributory scheme at the moment.

Participants within the age distribution - 30 to 39 years - have the highest percentage composition closely followed by participants within the age bracket of 40 to 49 years and 50 to 59 years. Participants above 65 years have the least percentage composition, data analysed showed.