Wednesday, 11 March 2015

Will your lump sum be enough? - Odunze Reginald




Image credited to Telegraph

There are 3 ways a retiree can access his fund, Lump sum, programmed withdrawal and annuity. Of these three,   a retiree is first and foremost interested in his total money available  to him as lump sum.
Majority of the retirees immediately became disillusioned and sick, once they discovered that they are having only 25 percent of the retirement savings account. This is because they are ignorant of the act and their friends who were opportune to have received 50 percent.
The pension reform act under section 4 subsection c  of the 2004 PRA states that a lump sum to the balance standing to the credit of his retirement savings account: provided that the amount left after that lump sum withdrawal shall be sufficient to procure an annuity or fund programmed withdrawals that will produce an amount not less than 50 per cent of his annual remuneration as at the date of his retirement.
 And in section 7 subsection 1 paragraph a of the PRA 2014 states that withdrawal of a lump sum from the total amount credited to his retirement savings account provided that the amount left after the lump sum withdrawal shall be sufficient to procure a programmed fund withdrawals or annuity for life in accordance with extant guidelines issued by the commission from time to time.
And in arriving at the payment of lump sum to retirees, four factors determine the size of the lump sum, and they are follows: Sex, age, Final salary and RSA balance.

1 Sex
The application that we are using for pension has the principle that women lives more than men , I do not know how they arrived at that but I do know that there are more widows than widowers in my village. In an article by Forbes, titled 15 Richest women in the world, about 13 of them inherited their wealth from their husbands who are now late. And when I did a pilot with National Population Commission, some years ago we also discovered that there are more widows than widowers, it all means that Chile Application which Pencom is using is indirectly right. Because by either the inductive and deductive analysis in statistical research analyst, analyst have come to that conclusion. But events surrounding women living longer than men as a normal application in social statistics indicates that the social mobility of a woman is a straight line and that of a man is an undulating plane. But the hustle of life and the stress of making it in life has come to reduce the life expectancy of a man.
But what this indicates is that generally women with the bio data with a man and retiring at the same time will definitely get a lower lump sum and a lower pension salary than her male colleagues.
2 Age , this plays a prominent role in the calculation of lump sum , the age at which a retiree is very essential in the lump sum calculation, e.g. somebody that retire at the of 50 will not definitely get the same amount with one retiring at the age of 60 or a professor retiring at the age 65 or 70.
It’s just simple mathematics; the retiree at the age of 50 will definitely work for ten years before his normal age retiring at the age of 60.
3 Final salaries
The scheme noted that a retiree is entitled to 50 percent of his last salary, what then happens to a retiree on a meager salary who suddenly finds himself with a huge salary two years to retirement. Obviously that retiree will not have enough in his lump sum calculations. In calculating lump sum, the salaries are needed , when it is consolidated with one variable, two variables , they are all provided for in the computation of final pension benefit and also in the lump sum.
4 The RSA Balance.
RSA balance is also a key factor in determining the size of lump sum, as there a retiree with a closing balance of 3 million Naira and a last salary of 150 thousand Naira will  not be able to get 1.5 Million as a lump sum as his total pension salary of 75 thousand will offset the pension in a period of 20 months.
it should be noted the minimum lump sum is 25 percent and the maximum lump sum is 50 percent, and the values varies within the range. Therefore what you get as your lump sum is a function of these 4 factors highlighted above. It all means you can do more by engaging the services of experts to know what to do to increase your pension pot, and until you that are rest assured that lump sum may or may not be enough for you during retirement.

Odunze Reginald C is the Lead Consultant, Chareg Consulting.
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