The two companies whose pension schemes have received the first transferred funds from the Bank of Ghana have described the development as timely not only for their respective operations but the industry as a whole.

The companies are Petra Trust and Axis Pensions Trust.

Out of the 27 licensed Trustees, only these two have so far received some of the Tier-2 Pensions contributions in the Temporary Pensions Fund Account, TPFA for onward investments on behalf of their client-companies.

MD of Petra Trust, Kofi Fynn explained to Joy Business they are expecting more. 

“The schemes fall into two different categories. You‘ve got stand-alone schemes where a company sets up its own scheme and a Master Trust scheme that has a number of companies that are part of that scheme. The flow we got was for a stand-alone scheme for a private company that we manage and what we are looking forward to is to begin getting the flows in the Master -Trust. In the Master-Trust Schemes we are talking about thousands of companies and that’s where the real bulk of numbers of people are and like I said, this is just the beginning. The amount we got even though symbolic compared to the entire amount of the TPFA was quiet small,” he told Joy Business Editor, Emmanuel Agyei.

Simon Ayivi also says even though it is long over-due, the transfer couldn’t have come at any better time.

“It’s a sigh of relief. We have been waiting for these funds to be released for the past three years.  Some of our clients have been chasing us as if the monies are sitting with us and so for us it’s confidence in us as a company by the regulator. It’s also confidence in the industry because it tells you that the NPRA has really has made good on its promise to release those funds albeit a little late. However, this is only a pilot so you could say that 99 percent of the schemes for my company are still outstanding” he noted.

Meanwhile, Pensions Service Providers are expecting all the Tier-2 pensions contributions at the Bank of Ghana to have been transferred to their respective schemes latest by the middle of 2016.          

This, according to them is important to ensure growth of the burgeoning pensions industry is not stagnated.

“People have been waiting for these funds for the past three years. The regulator has successfully run the pilot and it is time for him to expedite action. The first batch who are expecting their retirement from this TPFA would most likely retire in the next few years and it is important that when they retire they don’t have any amount of their pension contributions outstanding. Thus, its important that the regulator makes good on its promise that it made earlier this year”

“If by end of year they have not finished disbursing registered tier-two schemes with the monies sitting in the TPFA, then latest by middle of next year that should be completed. This is because the nature of our business is such that our revenue has a direct correlation with the funds that we have under management so the more funds we have to manage, the better the bottom line” Mr. Ayivi noted.

Kofi Fynn also says the transfer of funds should now be easier and faster following the successful initial exercise.

“At this point in time they should just go into a kind of auto pilot. We hope we can start going through this process for many. At this point in time, we need to begin automating this to a certain point where an application is received by the NPRA for TPFA transfer and within a few weeks after that we get a release of funds.What really matters is that the process has been tested, evaluated and has worked for at least one scheme then we can go ahead and do it for many” he added.