Pension regulator PFRDA is planning to train 1.22 lakh participants on National Pension System (NPS). This move will help in deepening NPS penetration and create better awareness about the voluntary, defined contribution retirement savings scheme.
According to the proposal, Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) wants to train Points of Presence (PoPs), PoP-service providers, aggregators, Atal Pension Yojana (APY)-service providers, corporates, nodal officers of central & state governments, nodal officers of state and central autonomous bodies and retirement advisors.
The NPS corporate model was introduced in December 2011 to provide a platform to the employees of the corporates/public sector undertakings /firms etc. Under this model, various entities like companies, societies, SMEs and PSUs can register for providing pension benefits to their employees. So, there is a requirement to generate awareness among the corporates and the employees about NPS. The same holds true for NPS- Individual Sector (all citizen model) and Atal Pension Yojana as well.
“PFRDA is targeting to train 80,000 government participants, 4,800 corporates, 19,200 PoPs, and 18,000 from APY ecosystem. The plan is to have over 3,000 target sessions across North, West, East and South. We have already floated a request for proposal for the same to appoint training agencies,” a senior official told DNA Money.
Despite lot of initiatives by the government in form of tax break and constant steps taken by PFRDA to make NPS and allied schemes popular, there were only 1.38 crore subscribers of NPS and APY as of October-end.
The assets under management under NPS stood at Rs 1.53 lakh crore, which is individually lower than the top mutual fund houses like ICICI Pru, HDFC, Reliance Nippon, and Birla Sun Life.
“We will also be having a post-training analysis based on feedback and reporting to authority. That can tell us about whether the training sessions are working or not. By end of January 2017, we hope to open the financial proposals. In the next few weeks, the NPS and APY ecosystem can start getting trained,” the official said.
Source: dnaindia.com