The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority plans to significantly expand the National Pension System, targeting 20-30 million new subscribers through a new digital ‘Tatkal’ route, with ambitions to reach up to 400 million non-government pension holders by 2028.
The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority is aiming to bring in between 20 million and 30 million new National Pension System subscribers over the next two years, with a digital enrolment push at the centre of the effort, chairperson S Ramann said on Thursday.
Speaking on the sidelines of NPS Diwas, Ramann said the regulator expects the new “NPS Tatkal” route to widen the scheme’s reach by allowing people to open accounts through the Unified Payments Interface, starting with the National Payments Corporation of India’s BHIM app. The facility is designed to let a user open an NPS account with a KYC-verified bank account and make the first contribution through UPI, removing a step that had previously required separate online or offline registration to obtain a Permanent Retirement Account Number.
The rollout has already drawn in five banks: State Bank of India, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and IDFC First Bank. According to Moneycontrol and Mint, the regulator sees the technology-led onboarding drive as a way to expand pension coverage beyond the salaried government workforce, particularly among informal-sector workers and residents of tier-two and tier-three cities, where retirement savings products have traditionally had less penetration.
The broader ambition is far larger. Economic Times and Mint reported that Ramann has set a goal of increasing non-government NPS subscribers from about 9 million to 350 million-400 million over five years, using digital onboarding, distribution partnerships and the StAR NPS platform to improve access. The same reports said PFRDA has also approved four new pension funds, taking the total to 14, as it tries to build a wider retirement savings base and mirror the scale achieved by the Atal Pension Yojana.
The National Pension System, introduced on 1 January 2004 to replace the older pension arrangement, is a defined-contribution scheme in which workers save during their careers and the money is invested in market-linked instruments. The accumulated corpus is then used to fund retirement income. It is compulsory for central government employees and open on a voluntary basis to private-sector workers.
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