The corporate and retail sector subscriber base under the National Pension System (NPS) has crossed over 30 lakh as on date, and the corpus under these is about to reach a landmark Rs 1 lakh crore-mark, PFRDA Chairman Supratim Bandyopadhyay said on Tuesday.
NPS subscriber base data has five categories - central government, state government, corporate, all citizen model, and NPS Lite. The 'all citizen model' refers to retail customers.
The government sector people join NPS because they have the mandate to join it; but in the retail sector, people have the choice to join it or not. And, the number of people joining from this segment is going up, the chairman of the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) said on Tuesday.
"As of August 14, the non-government sector, which is the corporate and all citizen model, we have seen that the total onboarding (of subscribers) has crossed three million (30 lakh). In this, retail is a big landmark for us.
"Three years ago, our subscriber was just about 13-13.5 lakh (March 2018) in retail and corporate," he told reporters at a virtual press meet.
So, in three years, the numbers under these two categories have actually more than doubled, the chairman said.
He added that the retail customers are serious investors as they are staying invested, which is reflected in the amount that they have contributed.
"The total corpus by the corporate and retail segment has reached over Rs 97,000 crore. So, it is also reaching the landmark figure of Rs 1 lakh crore," Bandyopadhyay said.
The achievement of three million subscribers in the non-government sector is remarkable as they are voluntary enrollments as compared to the government sector, he said.
"With the current momentum of 50 per cent growth in enrollments over last year, we look forward to adding a million (10 lakh) new subscribers during the current fiscal, in the non-government sector," he added.
The milestone of 30 lakh voluntary subscribers under the NPS has been reached over a period of 12 years.
The corporate subscriber base stands at 11.97 lakh as of August 14, 2021, as against 6.96 lakh by March 2018. The subscribers under the all citizen model or retail segment reached 18.06 lakh, up from 6.92 lakh three years ago.
On a year-on-year growth, the subscriber under retail model witnessed a 35 per cent jump from 13.39 lakh by August 15, 2020.
In terms of corpus, the asset under management (AUM) of the retail segment shot up by 61 per cent on the year to Rs 25,639.16 crore from Rs 15,928.71 crore.
For the corporate sector, the AUM grew over 44 per cent from a year ago to Rs 71,674.59 crore.
The overall subscriber base of PFRDA has reached 4.48 crore and the total assets under management (AUM) stand at Rs 6,37,089.79 crore (Rs 6.37 lakh crore).
This includes over 2.99 crore subscribers under the Atal Pension Yojana (APY).
The subscription under NPS Lite is not permitted from April 1, 2015, and the subscriber base under this category stands at 42.92 lakh as on date.
As many as 75.32 lakh employees have joined NPS from the government sector (central and states) and 30.03 lakh individuals from non-government sector (all citizen and corporate model).
PFRDA said that more than 9,100 entities/employers have already adopted NPS for its employees.
NPS and APY are the two flagship pension schemes of the PFRDA. While NPS mainly caters to those employed in the organised sector, APY is targeted for those employed in the unorganised sector.
