Over 13,000 retirees currently under Pencare health insurance scheme — PenCom

Director General of National Pension Commission (PenCom), Omolola Oloworaran, has disclosed that the Pencare health insurance scheme currently has enrollment status of 13,000 people.

Speaking at the meeting of the Pension Industry Leadership Council (PILC) in Abuja, the DG, who is also the Chairman of PILC, said the numbers were not encouraging as the Council’s target is for the scheme to reach 30, 000 for a smooth takeoff of the pilot scheme.

She explained that in order to expand towards the target, PenCom recently expanded the eligibility threshold from N70,000 to N150,00.

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“We have 13,000 people, and we need to be able to run the pilot scheme; we need to have a lot of people on board. We need to be able to test the system to make sure that it works well. So, in order to get more people on board, we have now increased the pension income level to 150,000.

“So everybody that takes a pension of 150,000 and below can go and try to onboard on the Pencare initiative, and will be entitled to free up pensions. But I must put a caveat to it, that the reason we are doing this is that it’s a pilot stage,

“We need a lot of people on board, and I also think that some ordinary Nigerians who earn low pensions are simply not aware. And we need to ensure that citizens actually have access to health insurance”.

Oloworaran explained that it was important for the number of people enrolled in the health insurance scheme to increase “so that we can get the number to test the system, so ultimately that amount (referring to the N150,000 threshold) may come down,” she stated.

The PenCare Initiative is a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative funded jointly by the National Pension Commission (PenCom) and Pension Fund Operators (PFOs).

For this first phase, only 30,000 retirees will be enrolled under the initiative, based on the following criteria: Equitable representation across Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) and on a first-come, first-served basis, subject to meeting eligibility requirements.