African pension award will foster image of industry – PenCom DG

The introduction of African Pension award in the forthcoming “World Pension Summit’’ will foster positive global perception of pension administration in Africa, the Director-General of PenCom, Mrs Chinelo Anohu-Amazu, has said.

The National Pension Commission (PenCom) boss expressed the view in an interview in Abuja on Monday, saying the African Pension award would create an opportunity for African countries to put a benchmark on the progress recorded in the development of their respective pension industries.

Anohu-Amazu said the award would be an annual event at the Africa pension summit, adding that the award had been designed to cover three areas of governance, pension coverage and socio- economic impact.

Anohu-Amazu said the award categories were meant to recognise the efforts of various pension administrations in Africa that had contributed to widening the coverage of their contributory pension schemes.

She said the award was also designed to honour African countries in their deployment of pension funds toward economic development and promotion of robust financial systems.

Anohu-Amazu said the award might be expanded at subsequent editions to cover identified areas of focus in the pension industry.

She said all submission of entries for the awards would be evaluated by a team of renowned personalities who had distinguished themselves in the areas of pension and social security.

According to her, the results from the evaluation of the entries will be announced at a grand event on Oct. 6.

Nigeria will host the second edition of the world pension summit from Oct. 5 to Oct. 6.

The conference, which has the theme, `Building Sustainable Pension Systems in Africa’’, is expected to focus on how best to entrench an enduring pension systems across Africa.