By Elizabeth ADENUGA
The National Pension Commission (PenCom), has approved 2,831 applications for payment of retirement benefit under life annuity plan.
The commission, in its 2018 third quarter report posted on its website, said the 2,831 retirees received N1.7 billion as lump sum payment and were paid premium of N16.04 billion to insurance companies.
This, PenCom said resulted in total lump sum payment of N68.17 billion and monthly annuity payments of N3 billion respectively.
It said the approved annuity applications for the quarter under review increased the total number of retirees receiving their retirement benefits through the annuity plan to 57,302.
On retirees under Programmed Withdrawal (PW), it said N15.23 billion was paid to 6,464 retirees as lump sum and N367.00 million as monthly programmed withdrawals during the quarter.
PenCom said the total number of retirees presently receiving their pensions under the PW increased by 3.49 per cent from 185,092 in the previous quarter to 191,556 in the third quarter of 2018.
“A sectoral breakdown shows that 66.01 per cent of those that received pension under the PW were from the public sector while retirees from the private sector accounted for the remaining 33.99 per cent.’’
On withdrawal of 25 per cent of Retirement Saving Account (RSA) balances, it said approval was granted for payment of N5.09 billion to 13,176 RSA holders.
It said the RSA holders were under the age of 50 years and were disengaged from work and unable to secure another job within four months of disengagement.
PenCom said the cumulative number of RSA holders who were paid benefits for temporary loss of job was 289,126 and were paid a total of N98.28 billion.
It said the payment was the 25 per cent of the balances of their RSAs as prescribed by the Pension Reform Act 2014.
According to PenCom, the private sector accounted for 95.62 per cent of those who benefitted from the payments while the public sector accounted for 4.38 per cent.
On death benefits, PenCom approved payment of N8 billion as death benefits to the beneficiaries of the 2,426 deceased employees during the quarter under review.
This, it said brought the total number of deceased employees from both public and private sectors to 53,237.
It said the death benefit paid during the quarter moved the total payments of death benefits to N164.12 billion.
For en-bloc payments, it said it granted approval for the payment of the entire RSA balances of the categories of retirees whose RSA balances were N550,000 or below.
According to PenCom, the RSA balance of the affected retires have been considered insufficient to procure a programmed withdrawal or annuity.
It said approval was also granted for payment of RSA balances to foreign nationals who decided to return to their home countries after making contributions under the CPS.
Accordingly, the sum of N996.72 million has been paid to 3,614 retirees, from 220 public sector organisations and 3,394 private sector retirees.
“Consequently, 99,444 retirees received en-bloc payments totaling N24.96 billion from inception to the end of the third quarter of 2018.’’
It said the pension fund investment based on unaudited valuation reports grew from N8.23 trillion as at June 30, 2018 to N8.35 trillion at the end of September 2018.
This, it said represented a growth of 1.39 per cent, adding that the growth indicated a decrease in the growth rate compared to the 3.64 per cent for the previous quarter.—–NAN
