Nigerian Pension Fund Contributors with Retirement Savings Account (RSA) may kiss goodbye at least for this year any hopes of them switching Pension Fund Administrator (PFA). The Pension Commission had planned to activate a section of the Pension Act that allows RSA holders to switch this year. However, the commission has now confirmed that PFA portability or what it called the ‘transfer window’ will not be possible this year. Here are some of the reasons given;
- Pencom and pension operators are yet to complete the cleansing of their corrupt RSA database. According to Pencom Staff ‘if the transfer window is opened with the current state of the RSA data, there would be chaos.’
- Another reason is biometrics. According to reports, the commission and operators are yet to complete biometrics and identity confirmation. According to them, biometrics was critical and the main reason why the ‘transfers can’t take off’ because the biometrics of RSA holders will be captured as a unique identity rather than as a signature, as it was done in the past.
For RSA holders, these excuses may seem rather pedestrian and smack of inefficiencies for a regulator that oversees an industry that has over N4 trillion in Assets. RSA holders who are seeing their savings post negative inflation adjusted returns cannot take their money to better performing PFA’s due to the reasons given by the regulator.
