The Pension Fund Operators Association of Nigeria, PENOP, and the National Pension Commission, PenCom, have recovered about N7.5 billion from employers who had defaulted in remitting their workers’ contributions to the appropriate Pension Fund Administrators, PFAs. Misbahu Yola, chairman, PENOP, disclosed this to journalists, noting that the new Pension Reform Act 2014 would make it more difficult for employers to default in their pension obligations towards their employees.

The chairman said that PenCom has a lot more powers under the 2014 Pension Reform Act in terms of prosecution and ensuring compliance. He explained that the body would need to engage the service of more recovery agents to further ease operation, as there are hundreds of companies in the country. He added that employees who are being owed pension have a right to report their organisations to the pensions regulatory bodies.

The PENOP chairman also identified some of the challenges facing the system, which include bringing operators of the informal sector into the system, reluctance of state governments to join the scheme and regularly remit deductions into their employees’ Retirement Savings Accounts among other challenges. He, however, said that the sector was being critically looked at with a view to evolving a mechanism to assist those in the sector to benefit from the scheme.

The PENOP boss assured that the new investment guidelines that would soon be released would give a greater flexibility on the ability of the PFAs to invest in several sectors.