The looming danger in the new pension system (I)
Monday, 12 March 2012 00:00 Gabriel Zowam
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In August 2009, Nigerians were jolted to learn that our treasured, consolidated banking system, which had been leading the nation’s extraordinary surge in prosperity, was on the verge of collapse because of mind-boggling insider abuses.

It is important to appreciate that our banking and pension systems are operated by the same finance industry, and that in some ways, our pension system is even more vulnerable to abuse than those banks. For example, unlike the banking system which is dynamic, our pension fund, which PENCOM put at N2.4 trillion as at November 2011, is relatively a “sitting duck”. We mostly contribute to the fund without withdrawing from it – only a tiny fraction of the contributors have started to withdraw from it. The fund, like the dormant accounts in our banks, can therefore be very tempting to the fraudsters in our finance industry.

While a distress in the banking system can be noticed very quickly (for example, the moment a bank is having difficulty meeting its daily cash obligation to its depositors), a problem with our pension system can take a much longer time to become visible to the public because hardly does anybody go for their benefits. Even when the problems have started to manifest, we don’t immediately take note because the earliest victims are the voiceless pensioners who cannot call attention to themselves – they can’t, for example, go on strike; and they are too dispersed to organise a demonstration, and may perhaps even be too feeble to march on the streets.

Finally, we can also add that our looted banks were guarded by two primary supervisory agencies: the CBN and NDIC. Yet, both agencies could not stop the bad people in our finance industry from looting the banks. PENCOM alone against these forces surely cannot have an easier task.
With this in mind, we can now look at the operational vulnerabilities of our pension system. The first is uncomfortable secrecy. In our very corrupt environment, in which regulatory agencies should use sunlight as their greatest disinfectant, the secrecy with which PENCOM is running the system should be a major source of concern to vulnerability and risk experts. For example, there is nowhere in this country where you can find the detailed annual accounts (not the meaningless 3 lines we occasionally see in the newspapers) of the PFAs and PFCs – not even in PENCOM’s library. Why do we not see the detailed financial state of the PFAs and PFCs that are managing the retirement future of millions of Nigerian workers? Why are the PFAs and PFCs not making their detailed annual reports and accounts available to critical stakeholders, such as the head of service of the federation, Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), Nigeria Union of Pensioners (NUP), and so on?

PENCOM’s response to us on this was that the PFAs and PFCs were limited liability companies and, therefore, “it is not mandatory for them to publish their accounts”. Incredible! What a shield! Our banks and all quoted companies are required to publish and freely distribute their detailed annual accounts. This facilitates independent review and analysis. Why is PENCOM shielding the PFAs and PFCs (which are managing even more vulnerable assets in trust for the Nigerian people) from this vital disclosure requirement?

The bureaucrats at PENCOM, even if they are all monks, should not be the only party that sees the true state of the PFAs and PFCs – in this our corrupt environment? If our banks could, even in their relative transparency, be massively looted under the watchful eyes of both the CBN and NDIC, we can only imagine how vulnerable our pension system has been, in this darkness of its activities – with only some PENCOM officials aware of what is going on!

The second is closed transfer window. Incredibly, one of the most important provisions of the Pension Act 2004 is the one that PENCOM has been very slow to activate, i.e., the “transfer window (or account portability)”, which was designed to allow contributors move their Retirement Savings Accounts (RSAs) from any one PFA to another should they for any reason desire to do so. The way things are today, once you select a PFA, you are stuck with that PFA, no matter how unsatisfactory it may later prove to be. For example, if you discover that your colleagues are doing better with other PFAs (or even if you see your retired colleague being frustrated by your present PFA), there is absolutely nothing you can do because PENCOM does not allow you to change your PFA, even though the Pension Act authorises you to do so. The closure of this transfer window has largely wiped out the sanitising influence of market forces in our pension industry and created room for political interference and system distortions. Unsatisfactory PFAs can easily “sort” themselves out and continue being unsatisfactory!

We should note that “account portability” is not new to our finance industry because that is how the industry has always managed our bank accounts. And the accounts we maintain with the banks are far more sophisticated than our pension RSAs – in terms of the different types of accounts that banks offer us, the opportunity each bank gives an individual to operate multiple accounts, the different conditions that apply to the different accounts, including tenor, interests, COT, roll-over, and so on. And yet, this higher level of sophistication does not prevent account portability. The point is that account portability is something our finance industry can firmly implement, if required to do so.

PENCOM’s excuse for not opening this transfer window has been that it is first trying to correct the poor quality of the data being captured by the PFAs. Incredible! Which data? Our pension records? For about 7 years since the inception of the system? Pray, who is in a better position to correct any “incorrect data” collected by the PFAs – the private sector PFAs that collect and own the data, or the government workers at PENCOM? In any case, is it not the same data that the PFAs themselves are using to maintain our accounts? In this our social environment of “ghosts”? What does it say of corporate governance in the industry if for 7 years the PFAs are being allowed to capture wrong or incomplete data, and to use such data to maintain our accounts?

There is also the issue of quality of staff, i.e., the calibre of people at PENCOM overseeing the management of this huge pension fund on which millions of Nigerian workers are relying to carry them through their post-retirement lives. Can we truly celebrate PENCOM for attracting the very best hands available in the country for this vital and sensitive task? Is PENCOM known for seeking out the very best graduates in the country and snapping them up for this crucial national task? How many 1st class graduates are working in PENCOM? How many 2nd class-upper graduates are there?

If the most important qualification for joining PENCOM is “connection”, as it is generally lamented of our public service, then we should be sorry for our pension fund. It will be tragic to allow our public service to use mediocre human capital to manage this delicate future of all Nigerian workers, at a time that thousands of high-flying Nigerian graduates are roaming our streets in search of jobs, and at a time our financial industry is daily recruiting the brightest graduates! Will such mediocre people in PENCOM even understand the language of these whiz kids, let alone cope with their schemes?

All these structural vulnerabilities are staring at us, at a time that recent events are progressively bringing back alarming memories of our previous National Provident Fund (NPF), which mobilised funds over many years from workers and could not account for them. We see the EFCC prosecuting some officials of the pensions office at the office of the head of service of the federation, where two persons alone allegedly looted more than N12 billion from those poor pensioners. If two officials alone could loot N12 billion from that relatively small HOSF pension system, imagine how much more ruthlessly such people can deal with our much bigger pension system, in the cosy comfort of its dark operations!

Similarly, Abdulrasheed Maina’s Pension Reforms Task Team recently discovered a fraud of N151 billion in their limited joint investigation with the EFCC. And yet our organised Labour and other stakeholders are not fretting about the operations of our PFAs and PFCs that are shrouded in secrecy!

Ironically, organised Labour may be energetically agitating for new pay increases without paying enough attention to “protecting” the increases it has already earned. Labour should be extremely interested in ensuring that this new pension system does not end up like the previous NPF. Corruption and fraud are a compelling factor in this country today.

It is a fallacy to assume that this new pension system will automatically protect the interest of workers simply because Labour has one representative in PENCOM’s Board. No! It is just like assuming that the activities of the legislature will always be in our collective interests because we are all represented there. Labour needs to wake up, now!

We should also not derive too much comfort from the fact that the new pension fund is managed independently of PENCOM, by the PFAs and the PFCs. While this arrangement is helpful, it has certainly not made the system tamper-proof. It is very easy for unscrupulous public officials (of which PENCOM should be expected to have its share) to collude with the PFAs and PFCs and loot the fund very mercilessly. In fact, the EFCC is currently chasing some bank officials precisely because of their involvement in pension frauds. Even our looted banks, were they not being managed independently?

We should equally not derive false comfort from the fact that the PFAs are able to show us our individual balances on the RSAs we maintain with them, which they clearly know we cannot immediately withdraw. The problem is not with knowing our balances – it is with being able to withdraw those balances when the time comes, especially when many of us try to do so at the same time. Even the failed banks never had any problems telling us our balances; the problem was with withdrawing those balances.

If you have too many PFAs and PFCs than our pension industry can carry, which are all operating with inadequate capital, you have the undesirable enabling environment for “cutting corners” and problems of corporate governance. Commendably, PENCOM has last year given the PFAs up to June 2012 to shore up their capital base from N150m to N1 billion. The question is whether this recapitalisation programme will succeed in plummeting the number of PFAs, many of which may strive to capitalise. Our pension system was designed on the premise of a national workforce of about 50 million, which has turned out to be a remarkable overestimation because even after all the main segments of our workforce have been brought into the scheme, the count is less than 5 million. If we continue to have more PFAs than the industry can carry (even if they are better capitalised), we shall still have the same undesirable environment for cutting corners.

Indeed, visible issues of corporate governance are already manifesting in the new pension scheme. For example, a recent investigation by a prominent newsmagazine specifically found various kinds of sharp practices already prevalent in the new system. In fact, some groups of workers are already clamouring to exit the system and run their own separate pension systems; and the Nigeria Union of Pensioners (NUP) has been calling on the National Assembly to probe the PFAs.

Interestingly, the communiqué published by the Stephen Oronsaye Presidential Committee on the Review of the Reform Processes in the Nigerian Public Service, from its November 29-December 1 conference in Abuja, expressed concerns about “major problems” in our pension administration and called for improvements in the “institutional mechanisms for pension administration”.

To the credit of the designers of our new pension scheme, the system has the potential to drive itself and meet our workers’ future pension needs – provided it is regulated and managed properly and safeguarded from predators. To this end, there are very urgent steps that the regulator, organised Labour, and government must take in the immediate interest of millions of Nigerian workers who have hedged their future on their pension contributions.

The regulator, PENCOM, must start by avoiding the usual posture of denial because the vulnerabilities of the system are significant. Instead, PENCOM as a responsible regulator, should: take immediate steps to open up the transfer window and free the system from distortion; give all the PFAs and PFCs a deadline (hopefully not exceeding March 2012) within which they must each publish and widely circulate their detailed annual accounts for 2011, and with a format to be specified by PENCOM to ensure enough disclosures.

The disclosures must include the detailed ownership structures of the PFAs and PFCs. Nigerian workers have the right to know the true identities of the individuals and families holding their retirement contributions in trust. The format should include uniform year-ends for all the PFAs and PFCs – not one PFA ending its year in December while another is doing so in June. It should also enable each PFA/PFC to report its infractions during the period, and the penalties paid (to emphasise corporate governance). Each PFA/PFC should send copies to all the critical stakeholders, such as the Head of Service of the federation, Nigerian Labour Congress, the Nigeria Union of Pensioners (NUP), National Insurance Commission, Securities and Exchange Commission, and so on. PENCOM should also direct each PFA/PFC to ensure that its latest detailed (not abridged) report and accounts are always available on its website.

Organised Labour, on its part, should begin to pay very close attention to the management of the fund, not minding that Labour is represented in PENCOM’s Board. This is the time for the NLC to take leadership and begin to ask critical questions – on corporate governance, on quality of staff, on openness, on RSA portability, on regular and independent assessment of the vulnerabilities of the system, and so on. Labour must not stay aloof now only to wake up and start to agitate when things will have become too late!

The federal government already has its hands full with our economy that has been in a mess for decades. I am sure that President Goodluck Jonathan and his reform team will not want to add a pension system collapse to all that. Therefore, the federal government should take urgent steps to secure the system better, starting with: a very professional and independent audit of the pension fund by a new independent auditor to confirm the present state of the fund; and an equally independent assessment of the present operational vulnerabilities of the system, to identify and plug all the scheme’s operational loopholes.

Zowam, a reform and risk management expert, is the Executive Director, Centre for Leadership Support and Social Progress (CLSSP).

PENCOM DUCK

Mr Zowam, Thank you for such a well written article on the current pension system (PENCOM) your article addresses two main problems with the system. Lack of full disclosure of account balances and investment, and the closing of transfer window right of contributors (which) invariably is an audit mechanism to safeguard assets of the investor. As an example if I decide to move my money and I realise that the company is pussyfooting about completing the transaction, this may trigger an inclining that the money may not be there to begin with.

These two things aside, the bigger problem which I think you are yet to address is the inevitable bankruptcy of the system. I say inevitable because the simple law of pension is that "I contribute today, the contribution gets invested and when I am ready to collect, the time value of money equation would have kicked in enough that I can collect my contribution plus, income, interests and capital gains over time". This income, interest and capital gains are generated by the management company through investment in various assets that earn an income higher than both inflation and operational cost. However, in the case of PENCOM, everyone seems to be contributing, looking at their periodic account balance but no one is asking what is the underlying money used to invest in today that will yield income and interest needed to pay me in the future. Like you rightfully said, there is approximately N2.4 trillion ($15B) sitting like a "sitting duck" in pension accounts, yet our government and businesses are globe trotting for foreign direct investments from countries that have a worse economy than us (the collective European Union).

Imagine for a second we attempt to solve some of our own economic problems with the "sitting duck fund", while simultaneously generating the needed income to ensure that the inevitable bankruptcy does not happen: Imagine we use the funds to build a much needed tolled 4th mainland bridge in Lagos, fully funded by the pension contributions of Nigerian - that way all the toll money less management fees becomes income for the pension fund not interest payment to some foreign bank with no real vested interest in our development. Imagine how much less grumbling we will have if PENCOM was the consortium that built the Lekki- Epe expressway!!!
I for one would gladly pay toll rather than find ways to circumvent it knowing that I am paying myself and investing in my own future. Imagine the same was done to build sorely needed low and middle income housing all over the country. Where working people could buy or rent a house or apartment on a mortgage indirectly funded by PENCOM. The interest will indirectly go back to you as PENCOM investment income, and it will solve another economic problem of adequate affordable housing. How good would it feel like to eat PENCOM parboiled rice and drink PENCOM juice, take PENCOM BRT to work or even fly PENCOM airlines. All the revenue generated from these investments will in solve the issue of needing foreign investment, and provide income for the "sitting duck" funds, provide much needed Infrastructure and finally and most importantly, provide jobs to the millions of jobless Nigerians who will in turn pay into PENCOM and make more funds available for development. To the discerning eye, PENCOM could be the veritable gift that keeps giving. But only it's gets off its "sitting duck" gluteus maximus.

i love this thread very much cos i av have my own misgivings about this pension of a thing. The issues highlighted by OP is very germane. To depend soley on a pension fund for ur financial future is tragic. cos with pervasive corruption and the dereliction of duty by PENCOM officials am afraid there will be trouble lurking ahead for many retirees. what would happpen to a particular PFA if a large number of retirees want to have access to their funds? Do they have the cash base to back up any sudden surge in demand?