Pension assets hit N13.6trn, govt securities remain dominant

Nigeria’s pension assets under management (AUM) grew by 30 percent year-on-year to N13.6 trillion at the end of January 2022.

The assets increased by one percent month-on-month, according to the National Pension Commission (PenCom) portfolio report.

PenCom said the number of registered savings accounts (RSA) holders grew by 625,000 to 9.6 million at the end of January.

Analysts at FBNQuest said FGN debt securities accounted for 61.3 percent of the pension assets, down from 71 percent as at January 2020.

However, when added with corporate and state government issuance, fixed-income exposure was equivalent to 70 percent of the industry’s AUM, down from almost 79 percent in the year-earlier period.

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According to FBNQuest, the share of domestic equities rose to 7.1 percent from 5.7 percent over the 12 months, and pension funds’ holdings by around N365 billion or 61 percent to N960 billion.

“Over the period, the all-share index only increased by 11.1 percent, suggesting that there was a slight shift in asset allocation in favour of equities,” it said.

FBNQuest also noted that late entrants into fixed income securities benefitted from some yield pick-up in bonds towards mid-2021 before yields began to moderate into 2022.