By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, JUNE 10, 2017: PENSION Fund Regulatory Development Authority (PFRDA) in its endeavor to promote NPS among the Corporates have embarked upon conducting NPS Workshops at various locations across the country. A Corporate Meet was conducted at Ahmedabad on Thursday in association with Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), Gujarat State Council.

Addressing the participants, Mr Akhilesh Kumar, Deputy General Manager, PFRDA informed them about the longevity scenario across the world and the need of pension in old age and sounded the importance of pension to be considered by everyone. National Pension System (NPS) promoted by the Central Government provides the platform to every segment of the society for savings for retirement and briefed the contours of NPS for old age income security. He requested the participants to utilize this meet for better understanding of NPS and implementing the same in their respective organizations. He highlighted the key factor of low cost pension product – NPS for a valuable pension in the old age.

Mr Kumar Sharadindu, MD & CEO, SBI Pension Fund Management Company Limited briefed the role of the Pension Funds under NPS architecture and the benefits of long term investment and the optimal return being generated by the Pension Fund following the investment guidelines issued by PFRDA.

PFRDA officials clarified the queries regarding joining of NPS, tax benefits, POPs details, timelines, transfer of superannuation fund to NPS, annuity etc to the participants.

The recent developments under NPS-Private Sector (All citizen and Corporate) are listed below:

• Process of Transfer of Superannuation / Recognised Provident Fund to National Pension System.

• Allowing option to change the investment choice or asset allocation ratio twice in a financial year

• Dispensing of requirement of submission of physical application form in case of subscriber opening account online and e-Signing the document.

• Introduction of Alternative Investment Fund-a separate class of Asset “A”

• Introduction of two new life cycle funds (LC 75 and LC 25)

• Under Tier-I account, minimum contribution requirement in a financial year is reduced from Rs 6,000/- to Rs 1,000/-

PFRDA’s endeavor is to significantly scale-up these segments during the ongoing months.