NPS account holders alert! PFRDA has this pension good news for you

PFRDA or Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority, in its endeavor to make the subscriber registration, exit process and processing service requests seamless and subscriber friendly, has been constantly introducing new methods of subscriber authentication such as OTP/ eSign based onboarding, Offline Aadhaar based on boarding, third party reliance for KYC, e-nomination, e-exit for eNPS Subscribers etc. The PFRDA has already issued a circular in this regard on 6th October 2020.

While a lot of NPS services have been moved online including onboarding of new subscribers and their servicing, the physical presence of NPS Subscribers is  required at POPs (Points of Presence) for in-person verification (IPV) to complete the process of exit and some other allied services. Compulsory physical presence is posing challenges for subscribers as well as PoPs/Nodal officers which lead to grievances and delays the process of withdrawal and exit.

To overcome the above challenges and in the interest of NPS Subscribers, PFRDA has now permitted its intermediaries  to use of Video based Customer Identification Process (VCIP), in addition to the existing options, in order to further facilitate on-boarding, withdrawals, exit and for processing of other related service requests of NPS Subscribers.

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In order to ensure that the intermediaries are not additionally burdened for introducing this facility, the intermediaries which apart from being registered with PFRDA, are registered with other Financial Sector Regulators also, are allowed to  follow the VCIP guidelines issued by those regulators for performing for NPS related activities also. However, the intermediaries which are solely registered and regulated by PFRDA, will follow the guidelines issued by PFRDA for performing VCIP.

PFRDA has vide Circular No. PFRDA/2020/46/SUP-CRA/18 dated 06th Oct 2020 ('Video based Customer Identification Process (VCIP) for NPS’ has issued guidelines giving detailed process flow for implementing the facility. Central Record Keeping Agencies (CRAs) and Points of Presence (PoPs) registered with PFRDA have been advised to build an online platform for the same at the earliest.