What is the Data Recapture Exercise (DRE)?
The Data Recapture Exercise (DRE) as the name suggests, is a mandatory exercise that requires all RSA holders who joined the contributory pension scheme (CPS) prior to 1st of July 2019 to update their information with their respective Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs). This therefore means that members of the CPS who joined the scheme from 1st July 2019 are not affected as they would have been duly registered through the ECRS.
The DRE was introduced by the National Pension Commission (PenCom) to improve on the defunct Contributor Registration System (CRS) used to capture the details of registered pension contributors at the point of registration and also served as, among others, the central database for retrieving contributors’ information. The pension regulator, PenCom, introduced the Enhanced Contributor Registration System (ECRS) as an improvement on the ECS.
The ECRS allows for additional registration details and integration with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) database for authenticating the uniqueness and correctness of individual contributors’ data under the pension scheme. This platform is aimed at enhancing the integrity of contributors’ information and in addition will help eliminate the issues identified with the old ECS which is the major reason behind the DRE.
Other areas that the ECRS will also help improve include:
- The Transfer Window Exercise.
- Registrations of contributors under the Micro Pension Scheme.
- Cross-Border pension related matters.
- Automation of submission and processing of employer codes by PFAs and employers.
- Processing and withdrawal of pension benefits.
- and so on.
It is mandatory for all contributors affected under the scheme to update their data with their respective PFAs. This will allow them enjoy the benefits stated above among other benefits.
It is pertinent to note that participating in the DRE is a mandatory requirement for the processing of any form of pension benefits requests as it is also for any transfer requests by the RSA holder.
As a way of making the process easy for contributors and encourage them to fully update their data through the DRE, PenCom, in conjunction with Pension Operators of Nigeria (PenOp) and National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), has introduced an industry shared service initiative (SSI). This involves the deployment of DRE agents to organizations to recapture the data of RSA holders irrespective of their PFAs. This is believed to enhance the efficiency of the exercise as it would afford more RSA holders to be captured while at work thereby saving them time and the stress to visit their respective PFAs offices. So in the coming days, DRE agents will likely be visiting your organization to get you recaptured if you have a RSA. However, this does not take away the responsibility off the RSA holder who is expected to get his or her data recaptured with his or her respective PFA.
It is important as a RSA holder that we participate in this exercise as it will enable us to have an updated record in the database of our PFAs and PenCom while also allow the RSA holder enjoy all the benefits of the CPS hitch free.
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