The Director-General of the National Pension Commission, Omolola Oloworaran, has lamented the negative growth recorded in the pension industry since 2021.
Oloworaran expressed this concern on Thursday at the 2025 Pension Industry Leadership Retreat organised under the theme, ‘Sustainable Retirement – Strategic Blueprint for Economic Development and Inclusion.’
The Pension Reform Act 2004 empowers PenCom to regulate, supervise and ensure the effective administration of pension matters in Nigeria. The functions of the Commission include: Regulation and supervision of the Contributory Pension Scheme established under the Act.
Speaking at the event, the PenCom DG said the theme of the retreat challenges stakeholders to re-imagine the future of pensions in Nigeria, “To protect and grow retirement savings and to unlock the transformative power of pension assets as catalysts for national development. Over the past two decades, our industry has achieved remarkable milestones, over N23tn in assets under management, more than 10 million contributors, and a regulatory framework that is globally respected.
“But we must also confront an uncomfortable truth, the pension industry is no longer growing in real terms, and since 2021 it’s unfortunate, it’s been a negative growth trajectory, and I would like us to focus on that today, we are also witnessing a concerning trend where pension fund administrators are merely transferring retirement savings account balances amongst themselves with limited net new contributions or meaningful expansion into untapped segments. Ladies and gentlemen, this is not good, and it must change. If we remain on this trajectory, we risk managing a mature but stagnant system.”
She added that what was required was “exponential growth, growth that opens access to over 77 million informal sector workers, of whom, as at today, less than 10,000 of them are active contributors under the CPS, growth that fuels infrastructure and food security, two of Nigeria’s most urgent national priorities, growth that delivers real returns and preserves dignity in retirement. Globally, we have seen how pension funds have transformed national economies across the world.
“We have seen financing of infrastructure in developed countries like Australia, but also right here in Africa, like South Africa, we’ve seen housing developments supported by pension funds in Chile, and we’ve seen pension funds also powering green energy and technology innovation in Canada and the Netherlands. These countries achieved impact not by playing it safe, but by balancing prudence with bold, forward-looking strategies that protected savers while enabling long-term national development. We must do the same.”
Oloworaran maintained that for the sector to contribute significantly to the economy, there may be a need to make some changes.
“The Pension Reform Act places on us the responsibility of protecting and growing retirement savings accounts. This is not a passive obligation. It is a charge to act. We need to take bold yet calculated decisions. We need to evolve our investment guidelines. We need to deepen financial markets. We need to foster innovative financial market products, and above all, we need to bring every working Nigerian, regardless of their status, into the pension system.
“This retreat presents an opportunity to ask ourselves the hard but necessary questions: how do we redesign the pension framework to be viable and attractive to all workers, ensuring healthy returns and a living wage for all retirees? How do we unlock infrastructure and food security financing without compromising safety and liquidity? How do we deepen our markets to support alternative assets whilst maintaining prudence and preserving value? How do we leverage technology and data to transform the pension industry? And how do we measure success, not just the naira value or dollar value, but by impact, impact on people’s lives? The Nigerian pension industry has the power to shift the development trajectory of our country,” she asserted.
Credit: punchng.com
