Mumbai:
In a marked shift, the pension fund regulator PFRDA will soon allow all the existing eight pension fund managers which function within the parameters of New Pension Scheme(NPS) to market their products.
PFRDA chairman, Hemant Contractor on Tuesday said "Soon, we will put the issue before our board and after its approval , we will issue a directive in this regard,"
When the New Pension Scheme was launched in 2010, the pension fund managers were not allowed to market their products to keep the cost under check.
However, there have been demands from the existing pension players to market their products as due to the lack of publicity, NPS is unable to catch up with other financial products in the country.
At present, the total assets under management (AUM) of NPS stand at Rs 2.61 trillion and is likely to grow to Rs 2.8 trillion by the fiscal-end, he said.
As of now, 25 per cent growth is happening in NPS in terms of subscriber base.
“However, this is a lean season for the investment and we do believe that it will go up to 30 per cent by the fiscal-end,’’ he added.
In total, NPS is having a subscriber base of 22.3 million and PFRDA estimates that it will be increased upto 50 lakh by the end of the fiscal, said Contractor ,adding that APY is likely to add 40 lakh new subscribers.
APY, he said has got 1.1 crore subscriber base as of now.
On allowing new PFMs in the sector, he said that it will happen through RFP and the regulator will come up with RFP only when the government clarifies on FDI into the sector.