Protecting workers’ retirement savings against inflation is your job, PenCom tells PFAs

Director-General of the National Pension Commission (PenCom), Omolola Oloworaran, has told pension fund administrators that protecting workers’ retirement savings against inflation is their responsibility.

He warned that contributions could lose their value if investment returns failed to keep pace with rising prices.

Ms Oloworaran spoke on Thursday at the leadership summit of the inaugural National Pension Week in Abuja, where she outlined challenges facing Nigeria’s pension system and called for greater accountability from operators and employers. She said the growth of pension assets alone was not enough to guarantee financial security for retirees, stressing that the real value of their savings must be protected.

“A contribution that is faithfully paid and then quietly eroded by inflation is a promise broken in slow motion. So let me be clear with every operator in this room. Beating inflation is not an aspiration. It is your job,” she said.

The PenCom boss explained that what mattered to retirees was not simply the amount of money accumulated in their retirement accounts, but what those savings could purchase when they eventually stopped working.

“Real returns, year after year, are the difference between a pension that holds up a family and one that lets it fall,” she said. Her remarks come amid concerns about the effect of inflation on retirement savings, particularly as rising living costs reduce the purchasing power of fixed pension payments.

In pension investment, a positive return does not necessarily mean that savings have increased in its real value. When inflation exceeds the investment return, the money may grow in nominal terms while still losing purchasing power. Ms Oloworaran said Nigeria’s pension assets had increased from N20.79 trillion in July 2024 to N31.8 trillion by the end of August 2026, representing an increase of about N11 trillion.

However, she argued that the success of the pension system should ultimately be measured by the financial security it provides to contributors and retirees, rather than the total assets under management. “The next great reform in Nigeria will not be measured by how much money we manage. It will be measured by how many Nigerians we protect,” she said.

“Failure to remit pension contributions is theft” The DG also criticised employers who deduct pension contributions from workers’ salaries but fail to transfer the money into their retirement savings accounts. She described the practice as a serious violation of workers’ rights and warned that the commission would treat such failures accordingly.

“When an employer deducts workers’ pension contributions and fails to remit them, that is not an administrative lapse. It is theft from the future of a Nigerian family, and the Commission will treat it exactly as such,” she said. Ms Oloworaran said PenCom would use the powers available to it under the Pension Reform Act to recover outstanding contributions.

“We will use every power the Pension Reform Act gives us to recover what is owed to workers,” she said.

She urged employers to see pension contributions as an obligation to their workers rather than simply a deduction from their monthly salaries.

Under Section 11 of the Pension Reform Act 2014, employers are required to remit pension contributions within seven working days after paying salaries.

Employers who fail to comply must pay the outstanding contributions alongside a penalty of at least two per cent of the unpaid amount for every month or part of a month that the default continues. The warning follows earlier enforcement efforts by PenCom to recover outstanding pension contributions. At a media conference in Abuja earlier this month, Ms Oloworaran disclosed that the commission recovered N36.6 billion from defaulting employers as of July 2026.

She said the commission would continue pursuing employers who failed to fulfil their obligations to workers. Beyond enforcement, Ms Oloworaran said restoring public confidence remained central to Nigeria’s pension reforms. She said the commission must show, through consistent payments and stronger protection of retirement savings, that workers could rely on the pension system after leaving service.