About 8,651 Retirement Saving Account (RSA) holders withdrew N14.20bn in the first quarter of 2024 due to temporary job loss.
This was disclosed in the first quarter report 2024 published by the National Pension Commission recently.
In the report, PenCom said that it received 8,702 requests from RSA holders seeking to access 25 per cent of their RSA balances due to temporary loss of employment.
Out of that, 8,651 RSA holders’ requests were approved, while 51 requests were rejected because their ages were above 50 years.
A breakdown of the request showed that a majority of the request came from the private sector at 8,167 while the remaining 484 were from the public sector.
Following the hike in the Monetary Policy Rate in the quarter by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), members of the private sector and economists had said that the decision would lead to fresh job losses and possibly recession.
CBN has been increasing the MPR at its recent meetings in a bid to fight stubborn inflation. PenCom in its report indicated that it approved N14.20bn for the 8,651 RSA holders under the age of 50 years.