“ARM Pensions refused to release my funds almost four months after my exit from the UBA. This is an organisation that never failed to receive my pension contributions for once throughout my 14 years of service with the bank.”

These were the words of a former employee of the United Bank for Africa (UBA) who is facing difficulties in getting his pension from ARM Pension Managers Ltd.

ARM Pension is one of Nigeria’s largest pension fund administrators (PFAs).

FIJ learned that the pension company had been using reasons such as “system upgrade” and “network downtime” to justify the delay in granting the former UBA employee, who does not want to be named, access to a portion of his pension fund.

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As seen in documents made available to FIJ, the pensioner resigned from UBA on March 31, 2023, after which he made a phone call to the company in April for inquiries on how to access his money.

ARM Pension emailed him on April 26, saying he could only apply for 25 percent of his Retirement Savings Account (RSA) balance in the meantime.

The email also contained information about the necessary documents he had to submit.

On May 24, he forwarded the documents required to process a quarter of his entire pension savings, and on June 5, the company acknowledged his email.

The company’s email on June 5 partly reads: “This is to acknowledge receipt of your documents for the data recapture exercise and 25% benefit withdrawal request. However, the second page of the withdrawal form is still pending.

“Kindly note that your documents for data recapture are being reviewed to be submitted to the National Pension Commission (Pencom) for necessary approval. A notification will be sent upon completion.

“The benefit application takes 5 to 10 working days for approval from the National Pension Commission. Immediately after we receive approval, your payment will be processed into your bank account within 2 working days after approval.”  

The UBA employee said he sent an email to the company to get an update on the application, and the company responded on June 8, noting that his data recapture was undergoing review by Pencom for approval. 

The company also re-emphasised that the Pencom review would take five to 10 working days. This means that if ARM Pension forwarded the pensioner’s documents for approval on June 8, Pencom should approve it on or before June 22.

“There was no update from them after that day until June 20. I sent several emails to them just to know the status of my application,” he said.

“That day, the company said the delay was due to ongoing scheduled maintenance on Pencom’s server.”

Later on, the former employee discovered that not only Pencom’s server but also the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC)’s server was experiencing technical issues.

“ARM Pension keeps saying the delay is due to these server problems. I have been emailing them since then. In one of their emails on July 12, they said there was still downtime between Pencom and NIMC,” he said.

“During my employment period with UBA, ARM Pensions received my contributions every month until March 31, 2023.

“I have over N6 million with them after they removed their charges. It is painful that ARM Pensions refused to release my funds.”

Ogechi Ilouno, a customer experience official at the company, told FIJ that the issue was not from ARM Pension but from the NIN verification link between Pencom and NIMC, which had been down since June.

According to Iluono, the UBA ex-employee’s application was being monitored closely and would be processed once data recapture was approved.

She also noted that the company would not be able to provide a timeline for resolution but assured that they were following up with the regulator.