How long will it take to withdraw from my RSA

May 14, 2023 PensionNigeria

Knowing how long it will take to withdraw from your Retirement Savings Account (RSA) is very important to enable an RSA holder plan properly and avoid unnecessary agitation and stress while waiting for your Pension Fund Administrator (PFA) to pay you.

The fact is that there are several variables that can affect how long it will take you to withdraw from your RSA, some of the variables are; type of withdrawal, remittance issues, documentation issues, Data Recapture Exercise (DRE) and PenCom approval turn around time. Some of these variables are determined by you and your employer while the others are determined by your PFA and National Pension Commission (PenCom).

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As an RSA holder, you must know that it is your responsibility to ensure that you do not have remittance and documentation issues and you must have also done Data Recapture Exercise (DRE). Once you have taken care of these three variable, the remaining variables will be determined by your PFA and PenCom, the two remaining variables are “type of withdrawal” and “PenCom approval turn around time”

There are different types of withdrawals from RSA and some by their nature have longer processing time. e.g Micro Pension Contingent withdrawal Voluntary Contribution withdrawal, 25% withdrawal and Enbloc withdrawal, will have lower processing time compared to Lumpsum and Programmed withdrawal, Annuity withdrawal, Withdrawal on Health Grounds, Death Benefits and Missing Persons withdrawal.

The National Pension Commission (PenCom) is empowered by law to approve all requests for withdrawals from RSAs. Your Pension Fund Administrator (PFA) has the responsibility to send your request to PenCom for approval and also follow up with PenCom for approval. It is NOT the responsibility of the RSA holder to follow up on approvals sent to PenCom by the PFA. The PFAs send approvals to PenCom everyday and they must be able to estimate the average PenCom approval turnaround time for each type of withdrawal.

It is necessary to state categorically that your PFA cant not state precisely how long it will take to withdraw from your RSA, but they can, based on your type of approval and PenCom turnaround time for past approvals, give you an estimate of how long it could take to process such request for withdrawal and get approval from PenCom. It is wrong for the PFA to say they can not give an estimated time because this only puts the RSA holder in the dark and causes unnecessary agitation. Estimating such timeline is not rocket science and all PFAs should be able to provide the estimate, unless they are intentionally keeping such information away from RSA holders.

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