Since the deployment of Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) electronic services [mobile money services] two months ago, there has been a considerable increase in usage, Dr. John Ofori-Tenkorang, Director-General of SSNIT has said.

SSNIT adopted mobile money services as part of measures to enhance service delivery. With the new services, members can pay their contributions and retirees can choose to receive their pensions via MoMo.

Addressing the media during a conference held in Koforidua, the Director-General highlighted that the electronic channels will allow SSNIT to migrate its inflows from the normal channels which have been cumbersome for contributors.

“What we have made available now is that in the comfort of your own office or home, you can go online and pay either through your debit card, your bank account; and more importantly also, through MoMo E-Levy exempt. Since we launched this about a month and a half to two months ago, we’ve seen quite a bit of a significant uptick on those channels," he said.

“We believe that in the next year or so, we will probably see a significant amount of our inflows migrating from the normal channels, which are a bit cumbersome, to the very easy electronic channels that we’ve made available,” Dr. Ofori-Tenkorang said.

Given the scheme’s target of enrolling about a million self-employed in the country, Dr. Ofori-Tenkorang mentioned that these channels which have been opened up will come in very handy to get the self-employed to join SSNIT and pay without leaving their place of work.

“I believe that these channels that we’ve opened up will also come in very, very handy when we get the self-employed to join SSNIT and pay without leaving their place of work. So far, so good. I think that there is a lot of improvement that can be achieved, and we hope that by the close of the next year we will see a very significant uptick,” he said.

He further noted that the Scheme’s stakeholder engagements are yielding results, as while sensitising people we got a significant uptake.

“Right now, within the three months that we’re doing the sensitisation we’ve jumped from 14,000 to 18,000 – which is an about-30 percent increase within just three months.

“We hadn’t even launched, even though today you can walk into an office to write your name as a self-employed person. We haven’t gone out there and, you know, basically officially opened the channels. This 30 percent uptick was achieved even before we rolled out the electronic payment channels,” he said.

“So, it is our hope that within the next year or two we should be able to get about a million self-employed people to sign onto this SSNIT scheme; and by so doing they will be assured that when they retire, they too will receive a monthly pension,” the Director-General stated.

As of October 2022, the Trust had paid about GH¢3.4billion in pension payments as well as survivors’ benefits and lump sums.

The Director-General said the Trust will close the year having paid about GH¢4.1billion.

“This is a significant amount of money that gets pumped into the Ghanaian economy to help pensioners survive, and this shows you how systemic and how important our organisation is – and that we should take this business very seriously."