Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA)

Table of Contents☰

About Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA):

It is a statutory regulatory body set up under PFRDA Act enacted in 2014.
Objective: To promote old age income security by establishing, developing, and regulating pension funds and to protect the interests of subscribers to schemes of pension funds and related matters.
It comes under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance.
Headquarters: New Delhi
Composition: It consists of a Chairperson and not more than six members, of whom at least three shall be Whole-Time Members, to be appointed by the Central Government.
Functions:
- Regulate National Pension System (NPS) and other pension schemes to which PFRDA Act applies;
- Establish, develop and regulate pension funds;
- Protect the interest of pension fund subscribers;
- Register and regulate intermediaries;
- Laying down norms for management of corpus of pension funds;
- Establish grievance redressal mechanism for subscribers;
- Settle disputes among intermediaries and also between intermediaries and subscribers;
- Train intermediaries and educate subscribers and the general public with respect to pension, retirement savings, and related issues;
- Call for information, conduct inquiries, investigations, and audit of intermediaries and other entities connected with pension funds;

Key Facts about National Pension System (NPS):

It is a government-sponsored pension scheme launched in January 2004 for government employees.
It was opened to all sections in 2009.
NPS is mandatorily applicable to Central Government employees (except Armed Forces) recruited on or after 01.01.2004.
Under NPS, a subscriber can contribute regularly to a pension account during her working life, withdraw a part of the corpus in a lumpsum and use the remaining corpus to buy an annuity to secure a regular income after retirement.

Q1) What is a Pension Fund?

Pension funds, which are also known as retirement funds, is a kind of savings scheme where you (as an employee) invest a small portion of your income/salary into a designated savings plan. The main objective of this plan is to get a steady flow of income after you complete your active years of service.

Source: Deepak Mohanty appointed PFRDA chief