Pension fund assets grow by N332b in Q3

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has disclosed that the pension fund assets under management has increased by N332 billion to N7.164 trillion in the third quarter of this year, from N6.832 trillion in the second quarter, the National Bureau Statistics has revealed.
In a statement yesterday in Abuja, the NBS noted that 7,710,564 workers were registered under the pension scheme in the quarter under review compared to 7,589,936 registered workers in Q2. This showed a growth of 120,628 workers.

The Bureau said the pension fund assets were invested in various asset classes by approved existing scheme (AES), closed pension fund administrators, retirement savings account (RSA) active fund as well as RSA retiree fund.

A breakdown of the total pension assets revealed that with N4.339 trillion, the RSA active fund formed the largest chunk of the lot, while CPFAs, which stood at N895.811 billion, trailed it, followed by AES with N696.309 billion and RSA retiree fund with N484.026 billion.

According to NBS report, the breakdown indicated that the pension fund assets were held in asset classes namely, domestic ordinary shares and foreign ordinary shares, FGN securities, local money market securities, open/close-end funds and real estate properties.

Others are private equity fund, infrastructure fund and cash & other assets.Pension fund investment in FGN bonds had the highest weight of 54.09 per cent of the total assets and was followed by the one in treasury bills with 17.73 per cent. While domestic ordinary shares represented 8.66 per cent of the total pension assets, foreign ordinary shares accounted for 1.41 per cent. Infrastructure funds had the least with 0.07 per cent weight.

In the FGN securities asset class, investment in agency bonds -NMRC and FMBN bonds – represented 1.30 per cent while state government securities were 2.29 per cent of the total. Others in that category were the corporate debt securities and supra-national bonds accounting for 3.98 per cent and 0.19 per cent, respectively of the total assets.

For the local money market securities, pension assets with the banks were 5.56 per cent, while investment in commercial papers and foreign money securities accounted for 0.47 per cent and 0.34 per cent respectively of the total.

Apart from the Real Estate Investment Trust Scheme (REITS), which attracted 0.16 per cent of the pension fund assets, real estate property gulped 3.45 per cent of the total.

While private equity fund took 0.27 per cent of the assets, cash and other assets accounted for 0.19 per cent of the total.Similarly, during the third quarter, participants within the age distribution below 40 years had the highest percentage composition, closely followed by participants that were less than 30 years and within the age bracket of 40-49 years. The participants above 60 years had the least percentage composition.