By Giwa SHILE
Premium Pension Ltd. (PPL) on Friday says its Assets Under Management (AUM) has hit N600 billion, from zero balance it was when the company was established in 2005.
The Managing Director of the company, Mr Umar Mairami, made this known at an “Award of Excellency’’, organised by the company in Lagos.
“The Award was held to reward loyal clients and customers of the pension outfit, one of the Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) in the country.
“The award, which was divided into five categories, was meant to celebrate corporate clients that had patronised the company since inception.
“The awards given out included: Companies that trusted PPL for 12 years; Companies with highest monthly pension remittance; five most compliant organisations on monthly pension remittance, among others,’’ Mairami said.
According to him, the regularities of the new scheme had enabled PPL gained the trust of the public and expand the customer base to 640,000 members.
The managing director said the company presently has staff strength of 11,000 with 46 service centres across the country.
He said the experiences before the commencement of the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) was a story of hardship and non-payment of retirement benefits to the benefactors.
“However, that experience has gone with the coming on board of the implementation of the new scheme.
“A lot of private companies have keyed into the scheme by enrolling their staff and we have succeeded as a country to have a functional pension scheme working in Nigeria,’’ Mairami said.
He said that a lot of work should still be done in terms of helping people to understand that the new pension scheme is much better and quite distinct from the old scheme.
“We would create awareness among the public of the new scheme because the country still implements both the new and the old scheme simultaneously, ‘’ the PPL boss said.
The Executive Director, Business Development and Investment, Kabir Tijjani, said that the company appreciated employers, who had entrusted the retirement account of their employees in the company’s hand.
Tijjani said the company also realised that the sooner an individual starts to save money for the future, the better such individual has a chance of a fulfilling retirement benefit.
He, however, advised Nigerians to kick off Voluntary Pension Contributions (VPC) with PPL.
Tijjani explained that PPL had evolved to do things differently by making customers the centre of attention and adding value to their contributions, leaving them happy and satisfied.
“We have embraced the use of technology to make life easier for the customer after retirement. That is how we have grown our customer base over the years,’’ he said.
First Bank Nigeria Ltd., Dangote Group of Companies, Ecobank Plc, Petrogas, Ami International Petroleum Development Company, Dantata and Sawoe were among organisations given awards in different categories in recognition of their patronage.
