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The Information Technology (IT) infrastructure to support the launch of the national Micro Pension Plan is already being worked on according to the National Pension Commission (PenCom) in a statement made by acting Director-General, Mrs. Aisha Dahir-Umar at the recent BusinessToday’s 5th anniversary and awards in Lagos.
The Micro Pension Plan is designed to improve the standard of living of the informal sector participants at retirement and reduce dependence on extended family for support at retirement, according to Dahir-Umar who was represented at the event by PenCom’s Head of Research and Corporate Strategy Department, Dr. Farouk Aminu.
IT infrastructure is expected to help bring speed and efficiency in PenCom’s ability to drive the benefits of the Micro Pension Plan to retirees.
“The Micro Pension Plan aims at ensuring that the informal sector participants save towards their old age. It is also expected that the plan would expand the coverage of pension contributors by an estimated 30 million people by the year 2024. This category of workers constitutes a large percentage of the working population in the country.
“To implement this initiative, the Commission segmented informal sector into three broad categories namely; the low-income earners, the high-income earners and the small & medium scale enterprises (SMEs). Each of these categories will be targeted with appropriate pension products and sensitization programmes that meet their various peculiarities,” said Dahir-Umar.
According to her, the commission introduced the Micro Pension Plan, which covers the self-employed and persons working in organisations with less than three employees in line with the Provisions of Section 2(3) of the Pension Reform Act (PRA) 2014.
