The Employer’s Role in Building Retirement Security
“An employer’s pension responsibility goes beyond deducting contributions. Learn how timely remittance, accurate contribution reporting, and proper member records help turn payroll deductions into secure retirement benefits.”
The Employer’s Role in Building Retirement Security
Money deducted from a payslip is already held on trust for the worker. Three employer duties decide whether it becomes an invested benefit on time — and only two of the three are in the law.
The Money, and the Clock on It
An employer deducts five and a half per cent of each worker’s salary at the end of the month and pays thirteen per cent of its own (Act 766, s3(1) and (2)).
The whole eighteen and a half per cent must be transferred within fourteen days of the month’s end — thirteen and a half to Tier 1, five to Tier 2 (s3(3)).
Until it is remitted, the money is held by the employer in trust (s3(7)).
Section 3(10) makes the miss an offence — two thousand penalty units, two years’ imprisonment, or both.
The Record That Makes the Money Findable
Paying is not the whole duty. Every payment must be accompanied by a contribution report (s63(6)), and the report falls due at month end whether the contribution was remitted or not (s63(7)).
The Authority’s guidelines set its fields (NPRA/GD/PAY/01/13, cl. 7.3).
Those identifiers are how money becomes a named person’s money.
Failing to register an establishment or a worker is an offence (s83(1)(a)), as is failing to send the payment with its report — though that paragraph is framed around the Trust, the Tier 1 side (s83(1)(d)).
The Duty That Is Not a Duty
Search the Act’s first 145 sections and the Regulations’ member- information rules for a duty on the employer to educate staff about their pension and you will not find one.
Sensitising the public is the Authority’s function (s7(i)); informing members is the trustee’s, across Regulations 37 to 42 of L.I. 1990.
The employer’s duty is delivery, on a clock:
- Membership certificate within seven working days (Reg. 38(3)).
- Annual benefit statement within fourteen days (Reg. 39(6)).
Note where that stops. The regulation is satisfied the moment the document is handed over; whether anyone reads it, or can, is outside every duty in the Act.
That is not evidence that explaining matters more than paying — it is simply the part no instrument reaches, and the part an employer is free to fill.
Why Compliance Protects the Employer Too
The risk is real: s3(10) is a criminal offence, and s198 provides that where an offence under the Act is committed by a body corporate, each director or officer is deemed to have committed it.
We could not obtain that section’s full text, so take your own advice on its limits.
One smaller point, and we flag that we have an interest in it because SPT administers Tier 3 schemes: an employer’s Tier 3 contributions are deductible income for the employer (s112(1)) — ordinary deductibility, not a tax preference — and no employer is obliged to make them (s108(1) and (2)).
Every figure here is Ghanaian and primary: the Act itself and the NPRA 2025 Annual Report for the year ended 31 December 2025. No international behaviour statistic is used anywhere in this issue.
A member’s retirement does not begin on the day they retire. It begins on the fourteenth day of every month, in a payroll office, with a transfer and a report that match.
What You Should Do Next
In Ghana, Under Act 766 — The Pinpoints Behind This Article
Remittance: s3(1) worker 5.5%; s3(2) employer 13%; s3(3) the 18.5% within fourteen days of month end, 13.5% Tier 1 and 5% Tier 2; s3(5) the employer may not recover its own contribution from the worker; s3(7) held in trust until remitted; s3(10) the offence. Also s96(1), (2), (4) and s63(1).
The Act’s own exception: s63(8) sends the whole 18.5% to Tier 2 for a worker who does not qualify for the social security scheme, and runs its fourteen days from the beginning of the month — the one place the Act starts this clock differently.
Reports: s63(6), s63(7); NPRA/GD/PAY/01/13 cl. 7.3 the fields, cl. 7.2 the last working day of the month; s91(3), added by Act 883, documents to an inspector within seven days.
Offences: s83(1)(a) and (d).
Vesting: s98(1).
Information: s7(i) the Authority; L.I. 1990 regs 37–42 the trustee; employer delivery at reg 38(3) seven working days, regs 37(3), 39(6), 41(4), 42(2) fourteen.
Tier 3: s108(1), (2) and s112(1).
Body corporate: s198, full text not retrieved.
The education negative is scoped to what was read — ss1–145, all 221 section titles, the Regulations’ arrangement and regs 37–45.
Not read: ss146–221, regs 79–156 — among them reg 108, “Participating employer to give monthly pay-records to scheme members”, which could narrow it — and some seventeen guidelines.
Stated nowhere in this pack because no source could be read: the Tier 2 surcharge rate, L.I. 1990 reg 102.
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