THE Fiji National Provident Fund's annuity business is in good shape following a reduction in liability by $334.7million from $565.2m in the past year.
This, according to FNPF chief executive officer Aisake Taito was a direct result of the pension reform.
In a public notice, Mr Taito said the actuary to the fund, Geoff Rashbrooke, valued the liabilities of the Retirement Income Fund (RIF) at $230.5m as at June 30 this year.
He said the valuation had been verified by Mercer, an Australian firm of consulting actuaries.
"The total RIF assets of $249.6m gives a reserve of $19.1m for solvency ($249.6m less $230.5m)," he said.
"The drop in liability has been achieved by the introduction of sustainable rates and a number of existing pensioners taking their refund as a cash lump sum."
The fund said under the FNPF Decree 2011, the actuary (Mr Rashbrooke) is responsible for determining the ability of the RIF to continue to pay annuities - a fixed sum of money paid to someone each year, typically for the rest of their life.
"He has to consider adverse circumstances for the RIF such as pensioners living longer than expected and rates of return on investment falling below expectations.
"The testing is supervised by the Reserve Bank of Fiji.
"Even under this strict testing, the actuarial results show there should be enough assets in the RIF to meet the promised payments for current annuities without having to draw on member funds," the notice said.
As of June 30, about 7000 pensioners opted to reinvest into the fund's new annuity products while 3000 opted out of the scheme through a full lump sum withdrawal.
Of the pensioners who have been validated and chosen an option, 70 per cent opted to join the new pension scheme.
Meanwhile, University of the South Pacific's Doctor Sunil Kumar said membership figures for the fund have continued to increase since 2006 despite the fluctuation figures for member contributions - $303.5m for 2011.
He noted members funds had peaked to $3billion in 2011 while investment income had reached $238m in 2011 - an increase of $18.47m from the previous year.