By Charles Mgbolu
No fewer than 70 senior pension industry executives from 25 pension funds administrators and custodians met recently to discuss and share experiences on e-pension and e-payment at a Remita workshop in Lagos.

The strategic workshop tagged Remita e-Payment and e-Pension was organized by SystemSpecs for pension industry stakeholders to discuss, among other things, the implications of the Central Bank of Nigeria Payment System Vision 2020 mandate on e-payment as it relates to pension contribution remittances and retirees pension processing and payment.

In his speech, John Obaro, Managing Director of SystemSpecs reiterated the need for all stakeholders to continue to work together to achieve operational efficiency, optimize internal operations and empower employer organizations to meet e-Payment regulatory requirements while remitting her employees’ pension contributions.

Obaro enumerated that a true e-payment solution should enable a user to view consolidated bank balances across multiple banks on a single screen, conduct end-to-end processing of all payments electronically, conduct multi-bank activity from just one place, and replicate an existing payment workflow.

Dr. Hakeem Bakare, Group Head, Corporate Strategy at SystemSpecs added: “Remita Pension solution has the capability to deliver funds to the account of Pensions Administrators and matching schedule to relevant parties electronically. This will eliminate a major challenge confronting the pension industry in Nigeria”
Some of the participants spoke of their impressions about the initiative.

Dotun Adebayo, Head Contributions UBA Pension Fund Custodians says, “very good initiative, successful implementation will address core problems in the pension industry.”

Joan Mbachu, Senior Manager First Guarantee Pensions Limited says, “The workshop was a good medium for introducing Remita Pension and it afforded me the opportunity to understand the process from A-Z.”