PenCom Reassures on Safety of RSA Contributions

The National Pension Commission (PenCom) has said it is committed to ensuring that all pensioners under the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) are fully recaptured and uniquely identified on the database to ensure that only bonafide Retirement Saving Account (RSA) holders have access to their contributions.

Mrs. Grace Usoro, Head, National Data Bank Management Department, PenCom, said the data recapture exercise for government agencies remained critical for the commission adding that it would continue until “we ensure that the last contributor that registered before the cut-off date of July 2019 has been fully recaptured.”

About 9, 000 contributors will be required to update their information in order to remain eligible RSA.

Speaking shortly after an inspection of one of the data recapture centres operated by Payone Solutions Systems, in Abuja, she explained that exercise which is undergoing its pilot phase was to enable the agents capture contributors who registered under the CPS before July 2019.

She pointed out that at that date, the commission was able to deploy an enhanced registration system which had inbuilt controls and requirements that met the minimum thresholds set by the National Identity Management Company (NIMC) for registration of individuals under the scheme.

According to Usoro, the development meant that the “contributors that registered before July 2019 did not meet this minimum threshold”.

She said, “So the data recapture exercise has been instituted to afford those contributors the opportunity to bring their records up to date.”

Also commenting on the development, Commissioner Technical Department, PenCom, Mr. Anyim Nyerere, clarified that the essence of the exercise which would be fully escalated by January was to ensure that all contributors under the CPS has an updated information with the commission as well as the Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs).

He said in order to speed up this exercise under the scheme and give opportunity for contributors to update their records, the PFAs had decided to appoint two agents that are approved by the commission to embark on data recapturing which is expected to last about a year.

He said the data capture agents have been “commissioned to do this exercise on behalf of the PFAs.”

Nyerere said, “The interesting aspect of this exercise is that it affords us the opportunity to enable all the contributors that don’t have their National Identity Number (NIN) to use this opportunity provided by this exercise to obtain their NIN.

“There is a symbiotic relationship between the agents operating this with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC). The agents are authorised to register people and obtain their NIN and NIN registration is a prerequisite to data recapture”.