Mrs Olusola Sowemino

By Ngozi Onyeakusi—Contrary to the fears and concerns workers usually have whenever approaching retirement, Mrs Olusola Sowemino has testified that Stanbic IBTB Pension Managers Limited made her retirement easy.
Sowemino, a retiree with Stanbic IBTC and the Founder of Ope Farms, gave the submission during a webinar organized by the PFA, tagged Stanbic IBTC Mythbusters session.

Sowemino, who was one of the panelists at the event, while answering questions on fears and concerns workers usually have whenever approaching retirement assured that Stanbic IBTC made her retirement easy by educating her ahead of time on what pension was all about and how to retire happily.
“Incidentally, I will say that Stanbic IBTC made it easy for me because five years to our retirement they came in to educate us on what retirement should be like and how to attain that, they are the one that even made us to increase our voluntary contributions . So I have that confidence that things will be okay and that they pay on time and they never miss a payment”, she said.

On fears she had on getting her pension paid and the reality,
Sowemino assured that she never had any fear adding that her findings about the firm gave her confidence.” The truth is that I didn’t have much concern because I did my home work and I realized that Stanbic IBTC had paid close to a trillion in benefits since they started and since I retired they have paid over 65,000 retirees and I have that confidence that I gonna be fine. So I was fine and they constantly giving us financial education on our investment and there were much to learn. I just have that strong confidence and honesty I don’t have any fear.

Speaking on popular perception about pension, another panelist, Olamilekan Bamidele, a contributor and a Lawyer by profession said, before now he understood pension to be scam adding that he held the opinion that when someone get old he or she will not get his or her pension. But now he said, ” My perception has changed because I have come to know that pension is what you need to do to assist yourself at old age”, even as he opined that he was excited looking forward being a retiree.

Earlier, the Head of Business Development, Stanbic IBTC, Yinka Johnson while speaking on how non salary earners could participate in pension, assured that the National Pension Commission (PenCom) and the pension industry have come up with micro pension to cater for people who were before now could not participate in pension because they do not have minimum number of employees in the company or were not in the formal sector, such as people with small scale business, petty traders, artisans, entrepreneurs among others.

Similarly, the Head of Investment Development, Jide Allo while speaking on Stanbic IBTC investment strategy and what made the firm stand tall among its peers noted that Stanbic IBTC rested its investment management structure on four pillars which includes: safety, liquidity, consistent competitive returns and risk management adding the firm also leverages on technology for efficiency. ” We bring our office to your location. We bring our office to your office, wherever you are across the nation and that makes us stand out in the pension industry”, he acclaimed.
On safety, he assured that Stanbic IBTC first think about safety of funds before investment. ” Whenever we want to invest, we first of all think about the safety of the security we intend to invest, we can’t invest in MMM, crypto among others”, he assured.