Tuesday, 8 December 2015

The Rationale for the Pension Reform Act- Odunze Reginald C




The origin of pension’s dates back to ancient time, the Holy Bible in the book of Numbers 8 vs. 25, stated “but at the age of fifty, they must retire from the regular service and work no longer” and according to King James version, it states” And from the age of fifty years they shall ceased waiting upon the service thereof and shall serve no more”
Why then do people view retirement as a wreck, the reason is that they have not save enough to cater for retirement during old age. There is a strong connection between planning, enough pension pot(Retirement Savings Account balances) and happy retirement.
And according to Robert Kiyosaki, in his book Rich dad, poor dad, he noted that “people work for two reasons, to save for retirement and to make lots of money” Continuing Kiyosaki noted that “an individual’s reality is the boundary between faith and self confidence, and a person’s financial reality will not clear until he or she go beyond the fears and doubts of his or her own self imposed limits. Those self imposed limits are what limit the retiree from enjoying a happy an successful retirement
Pension is an important issue, as a time will come when you will longer be able to  work, at that time , you fall back on your pension .
What is pension?  According to Wikipedia “A pension is a fixed sum to be paid regularly to a person, typically following retirement from service. There are many different types of pensions, including defined benefit plans, defined contribution plans, as well as several others. Pensions should not be confused with severance pay; the former is paid in regular installments, while the latter is paid in one lump sum.”
Continuing Wikipedia noted that” The terms retirement plan and superannuation tend to refer to a pension granted upon retirement of the individual. Retirement plans may be set up by employers, the government or other institutions such as employer associations or trade unions. Called retirement plans in the United States, they are commonly known as pension schemes in the United Kingdom and Ireland and superannuation plans  in Australia and New Zealand.
A pension created by an employer for the benefit of an employee is commonly referred to as an occupational or employer pension. Labor unions, the government, or other organizations may also fund pensions. Occupational pensions are a form of deferred compensation, usually advantageous to employee and employer for tax reasons. Other vehicles (certain lottery payouts.
The common use of the term pension is to describe the payments a person receives upon retirement, usually under pre-determined legal or contractual terms. A recipient of a retirement pension is known as a pensioner or retiree
The following are the rationale for the Reform
Most public sectors schemes are unfunded
Unsustainable pension liabilities
Weak and inefficient administration of the scheme in both private and public
Aging make defined benefit scheme unsustainable
Many workers in the private sector were not covered by any form retirement benefits arrangement
Existence of diversified arrangement which were largely unregulated in the private sector.
There was also mismanagement fund, corruption and large scale misappropriation of public fund
There were no organized data base of  the pension contributions
The idea of enacting the pension reform act 2004 came up when the committee set by the federal government in conjunction with bureau of public enterprises’ on the sale of NITEL and NEPA. Discover that the foreign buyers could not price it effectively because of huge pension liabilities. Because one question they continuously ask is are you operating define benefit scheme or define contribution scheme.
The committee to the presidency and the result was formation of a committee to look into ways of reforming the pension scheme. The result was the pension reform act 2004 this has been amended as Pension Reform Act 20I4.



Odunze Reginald is the Lead Consultant, Chareg Consulting, a management and marketing  consultant  a social media and social marketing consultant , you can visit our twitter anchor @regydunze, find us on Facebook @ Reginald odunze and reginaldodunze.com, at google+ @ Reginald Odunze and at Linkedin@reginald odunze.


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