PenCom creates new platform to handle consumers Complaints
By Eberechi Obinagwam
National Pension Commission (PenCom) has created a new platform that enables contributors and retirees lodge in their complains and get swift response.
The commission at the 2023 journalists conference with the theme: Transforming Service Desk in the pension Industry: strategic for improving efficiency and customer satisfaction said the new platform, Consumers Protection Department (CPD) was created to enhance customer service in the pension Industry by continuously liasing with the pension fund operators to ensure that services were effectively rendered to consumers.
Head, Consumer Protection Department, Ikenna Chidi- Ebere, while delivering a paper titled: Enhancing Customer Service in the Pension Industry’ said the platform was established to replace its erstwhile Corporate Responsiblity and ServiCom Department by the National Pension Commission (PenCom) in keeping to its Corperate Strategy initiative for 2023-2027.
According to him, contributors and retirees play a crucial role as stakeholders in the pension Industry, as such, ensuring their satisfaction through effective and efficient service delivery and compliant resolution aligns perfectly with the commission’s mandate to achieve excellence in service delivery.
He disclosed that the platform are daily monitored to proactively ensure smooth response to the compliants and inquires received.
Presently, he said that the department records about 150 to 200 complians everyday. Adding that the department is focused on the area of data capturing to achieve their results.
Eaelier, in her keynote address, the Director General of the National Pension Commission, Aisha Dahiri- Umar, who was represented by the head communication department, Abdulkadir Dahun, said PenCom’s proactive regulatory approach has strengthened the oversight and governance of pension funds, promoting transparency, accountability and safeguarding the interest of pension contributors.
Consequently, she said, pension assets have risen by N 1.77 trillion in the first half of 2023, from N14.99 trillion in December 2022 to N16.76 trillion at the end of June 2023.
“Membership also increased by 146,920 new contributors, from 9.86 members as of the end of 2022 to over 10 million members as of June 2023,” she said.
Also at the conference, the commission introduced a new mortgage policy through Pension Fund Operators Association of Nigeria, (PenOp) that will help Retirement Savings Account (RSA) holders to acquire their own home with 25 percent of their pension.
The department according to the CEO, PenOp, Oguche Agudah, would work with technology to achieve access to houses.
Nigeria has one of the lowest home ownership rates in the world estimated at 9% of the population, Oguche Agudah disclosed in his report.
The new policy hopes to improve home ownership rates in the country.