Good news for NPS and APY subscribers: PFRDA to begin e-KYC services
The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) will soon begin undertaking e-KYC services for National Pension System (NPS) and Atal Pension Yojana (APY) subscribers. The authority has received approval from the Department of Revenue.
The online e-KYC will further simplify the process of account opening as it offers the subscribers a NPS digital journey.
National Pension System (NPS) and Atal Pension Yojana (APY) are the two flagship schemes of the PFRDA. While the NPS caters to the organised sector employees, the APY is designed to meet the pension needs of those working in the unorganised sector.
Amit Das of Think360.ai, said that most financial products in India are low penetration - insurance, savings, etc. and generally, there is a poorer culture of savings for the long term/ retirement.
"For instance, NPS kind of instruments creates the discipline to save and create retirement corpuses. Hence, removing any kind of friction such as lengthy processes of paperwork will help to encourage to apply for such schemes. Aadhar, the largest identity database globally, being used for e-KYC makes it easier for subscribers to enter/exit schemes and conduct the transactions at their comfort especially for subscribers from the remote areas due to less to no onboarding costs involved," he said.
"With ''Entry to Exit'' (E2E) digital tool kits provided to subscribers, PFRDA has transformed the journey of NPS subscribers and the travel of NPS subscribers from entering the scheme till exit from the scheme, including annuity issuance, is seamless and can be performed in a paperless digital mode," the authority said in a statement.
PFRDA said it has enabled various digital enablers such as OTP-based authentication, paperless on-boarding, e-sign-based authentication, video customer identification to facilitate remote on-boarding, online exit tools, online enrolment for government sector subscribers, among others. The regulator had allowed NSDL e-Governance Infrastructure Limited, one of its central record keeping agency, to act as the Global Aadhaar User Agency (AUA) for the purpose of NPS and APY.
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