We are doing a live coverage of the workshop “Leveraging Switch Technology to Increase Pension Coverage to Informal Sector Workers”, in Ghana, organized by this country’s National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA) and The World Bank.

During the initial remarks, Mr. Hayford Attah Krufi, NPRA’s CEO, said that “NPRA has seen the opportunity for the industry to embrace the technological environment to facilitate membership enrolment and contributions”. Pierre Laporte, Country Director of Ghana for The World Bank continued by celebrating Ghana’s engaged regulator, involved informal-sector representatives & a pensions sector with appetite for the informal sector.
Hon. Ignatius Baffour Awuah, Minister of Employment and Labor Relationships of Ghana added that “to reach into the informal sector, we would have to deal with the doubts, we need to address these doubts and be very creative on the product”

In the second session of the workshop, “Overview of the challenges to informal sector pensions”, Mr. Samuel Waterberg from Ghana’s Chamber of Trustees said that voluntary contributions face lack of trust from users in financial institutions and lack of organization. Matthias Zeeb reminded the audience “Being in the informal sector does not necessarily mean you are poor and you cannot save”

The third session of the workshop “Why we need a switch?” by our CEO, Ernesto Brodersohn, deepened in the benefits that a pensions system like the one of Ghana can gain from adopting a similar technological approach to the one in Mexico, a switch that centralizes information, transactions and lowers costs for all the participants, resulting in benefits for the savers.

Ernesto remarked that Ghana has an advantage in the existence and popularity of Mobile Money as a savings collection channel, but that there is still a need to comply with KYC and to provide certainty about the identity authentication of customers. He also adressed one of the concerns that Mr. Waterberg expressed earlier by pointing out that a better organized industry is one of the benefits from adopting a Switch Technology, along with helping Trustees to save double efforts, thus allowing them to focus on developing new products and improving other areas of their work.

Brodersohn also highlighted that the switch becomes a relevant player to help trustees and authorities to increase pension coverage by: authenticating savers’ identity, making contributions more transparent and by never allowing savings to leave the system, so that they keep earning returns despite switching trustees, or else.

In the 4th session of National Pensions Regulatory Authority and The World Bank’s workshop “Leveraging switch technology to increase Pension Coverage to Informal Sector workers” speakers Juan Lozano, from Procesar and Claudio Sepulveda, from PreviRed talk about international experiences around switches in Mexico and Chile. Juan Lozano stated “Security is at the core DNA of the Mexican pension system switch” when talking about must haves of a switch, while Claudio Sepúlveda shared his opinion on limited scope switch: “The more institutions covered the better… but a limited scope switch is better than no switch at all”.

Follow the live coverage of this event in our Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn