In a bid to facilitate the smooth remittance of workers’ pension contributions, Pension Fund Operators Association of Nigeria (PenOp) has released an Electronic Pension Contributory Collection System (EPCCOS), an e-system for collection of the funds that is fully certified and approved by the National Pension Commission (PenCom).
EPCCOS, a Nigerian Inter-bank Settlement System (NIBSS) driven porter is a contribution collection system, which tracks monthly employee pension remittance schedules produced by the employers for the PFAs and records matching payments to the custodial accounts of the employees’ PFAs uniquely.
The porter which is free according to PenOp will not only assists employers to speedy up the adoption of the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) at the comfort their office but will put to an end cases of non-remittance of pension funds even as will makes payment easier for the employers.
Other relevance of the system include appropriate capturing, reporting and reconciliation of monthly pension payments by employees and creating a central database for monthly pension payment.
Introducing the porter at a two day retreat organized by PenOp for insurance journalists in Lagos, the Chairman, sub-committee on EPCCOS, who also is the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of UBA Pension Fund Custodian, Bayo Yusuf, noted that though the porter is currently undergoing test run with 500 employers that have embraced the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) but will be released for full operations by January 2015.
He noted that with the new system, pension contributors have no course to fear, as there would be timely crediting of employee’s Retirement Savings Account (RSA), Straight Through Processing (STP) even as it minimizes reconciliation issues.
Explaining how the system works Yusuf stated: “When you upload a payment schedule, EPCCOS will do a revaluation that you have uploaded a schedule on let say 20 employees. Of these 20 employees, how many valid PIN do you have there, it will generate return for you, saying you have 15 valid PIN and that the 5 are bad. It will tell you the issues with the 5 bad ones so that you can deal with it if you have the solution immediately in the system.
“With the system, you are sure the information are all correct and you are not even bringing out money from the system, that will not be accounted for.
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