Nigeria’s National Pension Commission (PenCom) has raised the allowable investment limits for ordinary shares across key Retirement Savings Account (RSA) fund categories in the pension industry.
The commission announced the adjustment on Monday in an addendum to the Revised Regulation on Investment of Pension Fund Assets originally issued in September 2025.
According to the regulatory commission, the jacking up of the allowable investment limits for the RSAs is aimed at improving asset allocation efficiency, especially with the noted absence of qualifying assets, especially in alternative assets.
It described the measure as a response to implementation bottlenecks identified after the 2025 regulatory overhaul.
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Specifically, the Commission revised Section 9 of the regulation, increasing equity exposure caps for RSA Fund I from 30% to 35%, RSA Fund II from 25% to 33%, RSA Fund III from 10% to 15%, and RSA Fund VI (Active) from 25% to 33%.
The Commission said the changes take immediate effect and apply to all licensed Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) and custodians.
On why the adjustments became imperative, the PenCom partly linked the measure to the implementation challenges associated with the 2025 regulatory update, particularly around new limits for ordinary shares, Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) bonds, and alternative assets.
In addition, it stated that a key constraint of the 2025 regulatory update had been the shortage of qualifying alternative investment instruments, which has prevented PFAs from fully deploying funds within prescribed asset classes.
The Commission maintained that the result of the constraints had been underutilization of investment limits and persistent excess liquidity within the pension system.
By raising the equity investment limits for the PFAs, the commission aims to provide them with additional flexibility to efficiently allocate funds as well as maintaining risk diversification across RSA portfolios.
The PenCom’s latest revised investment rules are seen by industry experts as part of its longer-term drive to diversify pension portfolios beyond fixed-income securities, which have dominated Nigerian pension assets over the past few years and limited returns on investments in the face of rising price levels in the economy.
It would be recalled that in September 2025, the commission raised the maximum allowable allocation from PFAs to private equity funds from 5% to 10% and 5% to 15% across some funds and introduced 12 qualifying criteria for PE funds.
