The PFRDA is deploying innovative digital tools, including comparison calculators and AI systems, to better guide and inform the majority of NPS investors who prefer default options, as the scheme’s subscriber base continues to grow rapidly.
Most National Pension System subscribers continue to stick with the default option rather than choosing a pension fund or asset mix on their own, according to Mohan Gandhi, a senior official at the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority. Gandhi said roughly 90% to 92% of investors remain with the standard selection even though they are free to alter both their fund manager and the way their money is allocated.
The regulator is now trying to make those choices easier to understand through digital tools. According to Gandhi, the gap between one investment path and another can be as much as 3% to 4%, although the outcome depends heavily on the time horizon and the exact combination of assets in a subscriber’s account. He also said that showing returns for individual asset classes can be misleading, because many NPS accounts contain a blend of equities, government bonds and other instruments rather than a single asset.
At the centre of the new push is a comparison calculator that uses a subscriber’s date of birth and investment period to show how different options would have performed in the past. Rather than forecasting future gains, the tool relies on historical data to compare selections such as Life Cycle 25 and active choice plans, as well as different pension fund managers. Business Standard reported earlier that PFRDA has also rolled out tools called PRIDE-DISHA and Pension Sahayak to help with fund comparison and complaint handling, underscoring the regulator’s wider effort to make the system easier to navigate.
That effort comes as the NPS continues to grow sharply. PFRDA said its latest data show 2.33 crore subscribers and assets under management of Rs 17.49 lakh crore as of September 27, 2026. The regulator separately said the combined subscriber base of NPS and the Atal Pension Yojana had crossed 10 crore by September 2026, with combined assets of about Rs 18 lakh crore. It also said non-government subscribers, including those in the All Citizen, corporate and NPS Vatsalya categories, rose 23% year on year to about 85 lakh by June 2026.
Beyond the comparison tool, PFRDA is also testing artificial intelligence for advice and service delivery. In its sandbox, the regulator is exploring Bridgie Samwar, a system built around rules rather than purely probabilistic AI so that recommendations can be traced back to the reason behind them. Ramesh Srivastava Arunachalam, co-founder and chief technology officer at Serpico, said the goal is to make advice explainable rather than opaque. PFRDA is also developing Pension Sahib, an AI-assisted interface for questions and grievances that is designed to work in Indian languages and help reduce language barriers.
The regulator’s broader digital plan includes NPS Central, which is intended to give subscribers a single view across intermediaries and reduce inconsistencies in technology readiness among the central recordkeeping agencies and trustee banks. It is also backing Star NPS, a platform developed by DAC Technologies, to widen distribution through mutual fund distributors and other channels. PFRDA chairperson S. Ramann has compared the goal to the rise of UPI, saying complex financial transactions can become simple, trusted and mobile-first. For a retirement system with millions of users, the real challenge now is not just online access, but helping people understand the choices they are making.
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