The National Pension Commission disclosed that it has recovered N213.07m from employers who deducted pension savings from their workers’ monthly emoluments but refused to remit such to their respective Pension Fund Administrators between July and September.

The commission made this disclosure in its third-quarter report titled, ‘Update on the recovery of outstanding pension contributions and penalty from defaulting employers’, which was obtained on Friday.

The report read in part, “Following the issuance of demand notices to defaulting employers whose pension liabilities had been established by the Recovery Agents, a sum of N213,071,826.04, (representing principal contributions of N156,533,438.35 and penalty of N56,538,387.69), was recovered from 13 defaulting employers”.

The commission also disclosed that the pension industry recorded a 1.18 per cent growth (107,158) in the scheme membership during the third quarter of 2020, moving from 9.10 million contributors at the end of the preceding quarter to 9.20 million at the end of the third quarter of 2020.

It stated that the growth in the industry membership was driven by the RSA scheme, which had an increase of 107,312, but added that membership of the Closed Pension Fund Administrator schemes declined by 154 members to 16,971 while the Approved Existing Scheme membership remained unchanged at 40,951 as at the end of the third quarter of 2020.

The details of the trend in scheme memberships showed that the cumulative RSA registrations grew to 9,147,039 as of third quarter, 2020, moving from 9,039,727 in the second quarter of 2020, representing a growth of 1.17 per cent.

PenCom reported that the growth was attributed to the increased level of compliance by the private sector as a result of the various steps that were taken by the commission as well as marketing strategies of the PFAs.