The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) has announced new system functionalities in Central Record-Keeping Agencies (CRAs) for the ease of subscribers of the National Pension System (NPS) and Atal Pension Yojana (APY).

In a circular on Tuesday, the pension regulator said it introduced an NPS Prosperity Planner (NPP), a self-planning cum advisory tool, in the intermediary section of its portal for stakeholders to track their retirement income, and other information.

The NPP will provide subscribers with three main functions: How much pension will they receive? How much pension will they need, and what should they do to achieve that? PFRDA said the system-level functionalities were developed by CRAs to meet the evolving needs of NPS and APY stakeholders.

The CRAs will offer multiple models of interface and new processes for the associated offices to ensure their maximum operational flexibility for the benefit of subscribers. These functionalities, it said, have already been made available by CRAs in the third quarter of FY 2022-23.

Facilities & Services

Withdrawal Due To Death: In the case of government employees, if the subscriber dies after the retirement date, the nominee will receive a maximum of 60 per cent of the corpus in a lump sum, and a minimum of 40 per cent to buy annuities.

PAN Car Optional During Withdrawal: For Sikkim and Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) government employees, the PAN card field will be optional while initiating withdrawal upon death.

Reduction In Withdrawal Timelines: Partial or conditional withdrawal requests will be processed on the same day. For partial withdrawal, employees must provide a self-declaration through nodal officers, as direct processing through the CRA system has been disabled.

NPS Regular: A separate bucket has been created to identify employer and employee contributions “at the time of contribution upload” to help in the settlement process.

NPS Lite/APY Dashboard: It provides access to PFRDA and State Level Bankers’ Committees (SLBCs) to state- and district-level dashboard reports. SLBCs require reports to monitor the progress of the bank branches under the state on a fortnightly basis.

To monitor progress, SLBCs can access the dashboard reports created in the NPS Lite application. In addition, user IDs have been created for SLBCs to access dashboard reports.