16,536 Firms Gets PenCom Compliance Certificate

About 16,536 private organisations got the National Pension Commission’s compliance certificate in the 2018 financial year.

The commission disclosed this in its update on compliance of the Contributory Pension Scheme by the private sector employers.

The commission noted that the cleared firms had remitted the workers’ pension deductions into the Retirement Savings Accounts with their respective Pension Fund Administrators.

It stated that in the fourth quarter of 2018, the commission received 3,046 applications for the issuance of pension compliance certificates out of which 2,044 were approved and issued while 1,002 applications were rejected for failing to meet appropriate requirements.

Part of the report read, “Accordingly, the sum of N7.42bn was remitted into the Retirement Savings Accounts of 966,155 employees of the 2,044 organisations.

“Therefore, the cumulative number of applications received during the year was 16,536 out of which, 16,100 were approved and issued certificates while 436 were rejected.”

The commission said it also issued a general notice to the public advising against the engagement of touts in their applications for a pension clearance certificate.

It stated that the action was necessitated by the increase in the activities of touts, who paraded as agents, with regards to the pension clearance certificate.

The commission said it was discovered that most of them presented fake evidence of contributions remittances in their attempt to secure the commission’s approval for the certificate on behalf of employers.

PenCom re-emphasised that all eligible employers might apply for the pension clearance certificates directly and there was no provision whatsoever for such to be done through an intermediary.

It stated that “The commission continued to apply various strategies to ensure compliance with the provisions of the Pension Reform Act 2014. This included the application of sanctions and collaboration with key stakeholders on public enlightenment campaigns as well as engagement of defaulting employers via pension recovery agents employed by the commission to recover unremitted pension contributions.”