Oguche Agudah, the CEO of PenOp had a sit down recently with David Alabi of CNBC Africa to discuss a number of issues in Nigeria’s Pension space. He spoke about the effect of the devaluation of the Naira on Nigeria’s Pension assets. He mentioned that there is not much value in converting the Naira pension assets to dollars because we spend in Naira and invest locally. He said, there will always be movements depending on where the exchange rate is.

For example, now that the Naira is gaining against the dollar, are we going to say that the pension assets are growing in dollar terms? He rather tried to highlight the strong growth in Naira terms over the years, as the assets have grown by more than 20% on a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) over the last 7 years. That said, He also highlighted the need for Nigerian pension funds to invest a portion of their assets offshore as is done in other markets. For example, in Botswana the local pension funds can invest up to 70% of their assets offshore; South Africa (45%); Brazil (40%); Mexico (20%).