The National Pension Commission, PenCom, has disclosed that it disbursed N117.89 billion as retirement benefit to retirees in the fourth quarter of 2023.

Data obtained from PenCom quarterly report  shows a 22.88% increase as against N95.94 billion recorded in third quarter of 2023.

According to PenCom, the increase is as a result of  higher lump-sum and annuity premium payments made during the period under review.

On programme withdrawal mode, the Commission said that Pension Fund Administrators submitted 6,598 requests for retirees to draw down on their pension through Programmed Withdrawal mode during the period.

According to the data, the Commission approved 6,592 requests, while six (6) were rejected due to wrong computations of lump sum or monthly pensions.

Out of the 6,592 retirees whose benefits were approved, 2,860 were from the private sector, while 3,732 were from the public sector. A lump sum of N34.38 billion was approved for the 6,592 retirees, while their monthly pension was N488.19 million.

Retirement Savings Account, RSA, membership also grew with 88,213.

A breakdown of the data shows that Stanbic IBTC Pension Managers maintained a dominant market share of 24 percent with 21,212 contributors registered, followed by Access Pensions Limited, which had 19.9% with 17,573 new contributors registered.

ARM Pension Managers Ltd, Leadway Pensure PFA Ltd and Premium Pension Ltd followed with 9.4%, 8.1%, 6% of the new registrations during the quarter respectively.

Consequently, the top five PFAs collectively held about 67.39% while the bottom five PFAs recorded an aggregate of 5.38% of the 88,213 new RSAs registered in Q4.