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Chuks Udo Okonta
Pension benefit annuity contributes 60 per cent of the total gross income of Life Insurance Business, Inspenonline can report.
The Director-General, Nigerian Insurers Association (NIA), Mrs Yetunde Ilori, who disclosed this at the 2018 Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria (CIIN), Offices Representative Committee (ORC) workshop in Lagos, noted that Life Insurers generated N71 billion premium income from annuity in 2017, while 22 per cent of retirees also chose annuity in the year.
She urged insurers to do more in retail business, especially in annuity which has the potentials to turn around the fortune of the industry.
According to the National Pension Commission (PenCom), about N259. 58 billion was transferred to the insurance industry in exchange for the monthly annuity of N2.54 billion to 51,819 retirees as at 31 March 2018.
The Executive Director, Centre for Pension Rights Advocacy, Barrister Ivor Takor, opined that Pension Reform Act 2014 has greatly developed the insurance industry, stressing that the implementation of the Act, has led to monthly pension payment under the Life Annuity Scheme established under section 7(1)( c ) of the Act to averaged at N1.7 billion as at March 2017 and that the total premium paid to Insurance Companies for the Group Life under section 4(5) of the Act was N170.57 billion within the same period.
“This has significantly assisted the growth of the insurance industry. The current Net Assets Value of Pension Assets under the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) has been put at N8.14trillion. This is happening against a background of Federal government budgetary pension deficit estimated at N2 trillion as at June 2004, when the Contributory Pension Scheme took off and a non-existing industry before the Contributory Pension Scheme took off, is a huge achievement,” he said.
