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,Gujarat
today in association with Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and
Industry (FICCI), Gujarat State Council.
Addressing the participants, Shri 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.
Shri
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.
Dr Param Shah, Head, FICCI Gujarat State Council in his welcome
address lauded the efforts of PFRDA for organizing such meetings across the
country and creating awareness about NPS which can be effective platform for
corporates to provide pension to their employees.
As
on 09th June 2017, more than 6.09 lacs employees of 3,593 Registered
Corporates have joined NPS under NPS Corporate Model. More than 4.62 lacs
subscribers have joined NPS under NPS-All Citizen Model. The overall number of
NPS and APY subscribers have crossed 1.60 crores with overall Asset under
Management (AUM) of more than 1,87,000 crores.
More than 80 participants from around 50 corporates attended the
workshop. Ahmedabad / Gujarat based POPs were also present for the workshop.
PFRDA official gave a detailed presentation on NPS and informed the
participants about the features, benefits and the process of joining NPS to the
employees as well as to the employers. Official of Deloitte Haskins & Sells
LLP gave
a presentation on Tax benefits of NPS as compared to
other financial products. Two Ahmedabad based Registered Corporates- namely
Adani Power and Arvind Limited, informed the
participants about their experience of facilitating NPS to their employees and
the need and benefits of implementing NPS in the organization.
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:
i.
Process of Transfer of Superannuation / Recognised Provident Fund
to National Pension System.
ii.
Allowing option to change the investment choice or asset
allocation ratio twice in a Financial Year
iii.
Dispensing of requirement of submission of physical application
form in case of subscriber opening account online and e-Signing the document.
iv.
Introduction of Alternative Investment Fund-a separate class of
Asset “A”
v.
Introduction of two new life cycle funds (LC 75 and LC 25)
vi.
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.
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DSM/KA
