Retirees under the contributory pension scheme (CPS), have embraced programmed withdrawal as the overwhelming choice of monthly pension benefits, as opposed to life annuity which is managed by life insurance companies.

The National Pension Commission (PenCom), in its fourth quarter 2020 report said 11,374 retirees opted for programmed withdrawal for their monthly pension benefits offered by PFAs, while 1596 embraced retiree life annuity.

PenCom: More Pensioners Opted For Programmed Withdrawal For Monthly Pension Benefits Offered By PFAs

PenCom stated that it granted approval for 11,374, comprising 5,681 public (FGN & States) and 5,693 private sector retirees to draw pension through the programme withdrawal. PenCom report said these retirees received N32,631,748,404.55, while their monthly pension benefit amounted to N455,487,074.25.

The Commission also granted approval to 1,596 retirees under life annuity and, N6,284,179,444.33 was approved for payment to the retirees while the sum approved for payment to 14 retirees life annuity providers as premium in return for total monthly/quarterly annuities was N111,677,547.00.

The Commission, the report stated, granted approval for enbloc payment of retirement benefits to 3499 retirees whose RSA balance were N500,000.00 or below and considered insufficient to procure programmed withdrawal or life annuity of a reasonable amount for an expected life span. Consequently N848,920,264.47 was paid to the 3,499 retirees comprising 200 public (FGN& States) and 3,299 private sector retirees.