By Favour Nnabugwu

National Pension Commission, PenCom, says micro pension fund grew by a whopping 58.65 percent by April 2021

As of the end of December 2020, micro pension fund assets stood at N74.65 million and by the end of April 2021, the figure had increased to N118.43 million represent 58.65 percent

According to the various pension asset summary reports released by PenCom , Nigeria’s conventional pension assets have increased marginally by 0.75 percent, from N12.31 trillion as of December 31, 2020, to N12.4 trillion as of April 30, 2021.

The analysis shows that the fund 1 category’s net asset value grew by 12.21percent, while funds 2, 3 and 4 grew by 1.67 percent, 3.81percent, and 1.12 percent respectively.

Though micro pension funds are growing in leaps and bounds, not much information or data is available about them. Unlike the “conventional” pension funds, where the fund managers readily publish daily or weekly based price data, only a few micro pension funds have their prices being published.

According to information from the National Pension Commission, in the first quarter of 2021, 19 Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) registered 3,292 micro pension contributors. In the same period, N16.7 million was remitted to the Retirement Savings Accounts (RSAs) of 435 micro pension fund contributors.

Over 105 Micro Pension participants converted to Mandatory Contributory Pension Schemes (CPS), an event that involved the transfer of N963,136 to the respective Retirement Savings Accounts of the affected participants.

PenCom facilitating further growth
The highly impressive growth is going to be further buoyed by the recent change in the fee structure of micro pension funds released by the National Pension Commission