The Director-General of the National Pension Commission (PenCom), Omolola Oloworaran, has urged Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) and other industry stakeholders to open three million additional funded Retirement Savings Accounts within one year.
Oloworaran disclosed this on Thursday at the National Pension Conference and Awards in Abuja, attended by Nairametrics and held as part of the ongoing National Pension Week 2026.
The call comes after Nigeria’s pension industry delivered a strong performance in the first nine months (9M) of 2025, with several Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) recording impressive average returns across the four Retirement Savings Account (RSA) fund categories.
Roadmap for the next decade of Nigeria’s pension industry
Delivering her keynote address, Oloworaran maintained that five major reforms, or shifts, must take place within the next 10 years to further reposition Nigeria’s pension industry.
- “I believe the next decade of Nigerian pensions rests on five shifts,” she said.
The first shift, according to her, is from payroll to population.
She highlighted that, for 20 years, the pension scheme had followed salaries.
- “Now it must follow the worker, to the market, to the motor park, the farm cluster, and the phone in every pocket,” she added.
She said that, through the Personal Pension Plan (PPP), accredited pension agents and other initiatives, the Commission would reach Nigerians where they are.
To achieve this, she disclosed that she had asked industry players to commit to opening three million additional funded active accounts within the next year.
- “And the good news: the owners of all our pension fund administrators have committed to that. Not registrations, 3 million funded active accounts, new accounts. Because an empty account is a statistic, but a funded account is a future and might just be the beginning of planning the security of that future,” she added.
The second reform is from savings to security, ensuring that no Nigerian who has served and worked for the nation and saved for retirement should grow old in want.
According to her, that promise will materialise in November, 2026 when President Bola Tinubu launches the Pension Security Initiative.
She also called for a shift from commitment to enforcement, adding that, within the next decade, the Commission would use every power conferred on it by the Pension Reform Act to recover what is owed to workers.
She advised every employer in Nigeria to see pensions not as deductions but as a declaration that the people who build their businesses will not be abandoned when they can no longer work.
- She proposed the fourth reform as a movement “from size to strength.”
She highlighted that a pension industry holding the savings of millions of Nigerians must be strong enough to protect them.
She reiterated that every pension fund administrator and custodian must complete recapitalisation by June 30, 2027.
She proposed that the pension industry must move from capital to development over the next decade.
- “Pension money is not government money. It is not industry money. It is the deferred wages of Nigerians—hard-working Nigerian workers,” she said.
Drawing lessons from foreign jurisdictions where workers own stakes in airports and roads, she said those deferred wages could also help build a nation.
She explained that Nigerian savings could finance power, roads, housing and enterprises that would create the next generation of contributors.
President Tinubu demands greater responsibility
Speaking to the audience, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, represented by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Senator George Akume, called for stronger regulatory oversight, improved compliance and greater responsibility across the pension ecosystem.
- He warned against reckless investment decisions, stressing that pension funds must be managed professionally and with due regard for the interests of contributors and retirees.
According to the President, investment decisions should be based on rigorous assessments of risks and returns.
He charged PenCom to sustain its role as a forward-looking regulator by enforcing relevant laws and standards without fear or favour while ensuring that pension fund administrators and other operators remained accountable.
Accredited pension agents must step up — Tunji Andrews
Speaking with Nairametrics, the CEO of Awabah, Tunji Andrews, said that, at least for Awabah, the bottlenecks associated with technology and access had been addressed.
According to him, what is now required of licensed accredited pension agents and other stakeholders is significant work in raising awareness to encourage more Nigerians to join the pension system.
- He added that, while the regulator remained at the centre of the pension ecosystem, there was much more his colleagues needed to do to “meet up to what the regulator has put as benchmark for us.”
He urged accredited pension agents to step up their efforts to meet the standards set by the regulator.
Competition intensifies among pension fund administrators
Among Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs), Nairametrics previously reported that top five operators accounted for 54.41% of new Retirement Savings Account (RSA) registrations in the first quarter of 2026, down from 62.11% in the previous quarter.
Stanbic IBTC Pension Managers led the industry with 25,024 new RSA registrations, representing 17.47% of the total.
Other leading operators included:
- AccessARM Pensions – 10.63%
- FCMB Pensions – 10.15%
- TangerineAPT Pensions – 9.65%
- Trustfund Pensions – 6.73%
PenCom had noted that TangerineAPT’s emergence among the top five operators signals increasing competition within the sector.
