The Pension Fund Operators Association of Nigeria (PenOp) has intensified efforts to make access to equity contribution for residential mortgage easier for Nigerian workers.
The Association in its recent knowledge sharing session, which had more than 500 pension professionals in attendance equipped attendees with practical ways to effectively navigate the utilisation of their Retirement Savings Account (RSA) balance for acquisition of residential mortgage.
The seminar titled: “Getting A Mortgage Just Got Easier and Affordable: How the 25 percent Retirement Savings Account (RSA) Mortgage & the National Housing Fund Can be Accessed”, underscores PenOp believe on the importance of home ownership in improving the standard of living of Nigerians.
Oguche Agudah, chief executive officer of PenOp, emphasised the need for employees within the pension industry to take advantage of and utilise the 25 percent of their RSA balance for mortgage purposes.
He mentioned that as at May 2024, the National Pension Commission (PenCom) had approved 4,286 applications valued at N39.8 billion.
Agudah said the online session was designed to shine light on the topic, and enable participants to understand how to use a portion of their RSA to access residential mortgage and access the National Housing Fund (NHF) backed mortgage plan, thus making owning a home easier.
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Home ownership in Nigeria has increasingly become difficult over the years, particularly with the increasing cost of building materials, which consequently affects the ability of the average working-class Nigerian to own a home.
Adaobi Okoye, PenOp’ s head of Human Resources highlighted the fact that PenOp organizes these free monthly information sessions to add value to pension operators and the industry at large.
Simon Ogwu, who is the chief operating officer/ED at AG Mortgage bank Plc explained the rudiments of a mortgage and the workings of the National Housing Fund (NHF). Going further, he talked about the contributory requirement to access the fund as well as the fixed interest rate of the NHF and the calculation for the repayment period, which is at a maximum of 30 years. He also spoke about the home renovation loan, which is a product under the NHF scheme, to finance an existing home renovation or to improve it.
Diving deeper into this topic, Sodipe Bababunmi Olutola, group head, Benefit Administration, Fidelity Pension Managers, spoke extensively about accessing 25 percent of RSA balance for purchase of residential mortgage property.
He explained the objectives of equity contribution by RSA finance for contributors under the contributory pension scheme as well as improve the standard of living of contributors through home ownership.
He also spoke about the eligibility and minimum contributory requirement in order to qualify a contributor to access 25 percent of their RSA balance for residential mortgage.
Sodipe also spoke about the statutorily acceptable bodies that can provide mortgages to which the 25 percent of RSA can be used as equity contribution, and the required eligibility criteria for those mortgage lenders.
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