BusinessLine (Mumbai)

Max Life Pension targets 400 corporates this year

- KR Srivats

Max Life Pension Fund Management Ltd (MLPF), a recent entrant in pension fund management space, is on a scaling up mode, aiming to onboard atleast 400 corporates this financial year, Ranbheer Singh Dhariwal, Chief Executive Ocer has said.

In 2023-24, which was the company’s first full year of operations, as many as 105 corporates were onboarded out of which 80 were new to National Pension System (NPS), Dhariwal told Businessli­ne here in an interview.

This company is also looking to ramp up its individual NPS subscriber count from 8,500 now to about 30,000 by end March 2025, he added.

MLPF, which is a subsidiary of Max Life Insurance, will soon launch a facility for all customers (both retail and corporate) to achieve seamless onboarding to NPS via WhatsApp.

MLPF had in August 2022 secured its Commenceme­nt of Business certificat­e from the pension regulator Pension Fund Regulatory and Developmen­t Authority (PFRDA).

AUM

The company had ended March 31, 2024, with an assets under management (AUM) of ₹576 crore, of which nearly 45 per cent has come through the Equity scheme opted by subscriber­s. In end March 2023, MLPF’s assets under management stood at ₹ 144 crore.

Dhariwal said that the company is keen to in the next few years be among the top five pension fund managers by incrementa­l assets under management (AUM).

“We don’t see ourselves as a late entrant in the pension

Ranbheer Singh Dhariwal, CEO, Max Life Pension Fund Management

management space. The market is large. If you focus on the right things, AUMs will come”, he said.

Currently there are eleven PFRDA-approved pension fund managers in the country. As many as three new players — Max Life, Tata Pension Fund Management and Axis —had entered the pension fund management space in 2022 and have commenced operations. Later

DSP Pensions became the 11th player after it received its certificat­e of registrati­on in September 2023.

Despite being the youngest Pension Fund Management firm, MLPF had dierentiat­ed itself by recently launching a WhatsApp bot (NPS Mitra) for servicing of customer queries.

“Biggest challenge when we meet people is that they couldn’t remember their PRAN number. On the bot we said we don’t need your PRAN number, all you have to do is have your PAN number. We validate through your PAN and give them eight dierent services that covers 70 percent of service request from the CRA side. We have brought convenienc­e to customers”, Dhariwal added.

POP LICENCE

MLPF does both pension fund management as well as serves as a Points of Presence (distributo­r of NPS). The company got its PoP licence in February last year.

Last year Max Life Insurance’s MD & CEO Prashant Tripathy had said that Max Life Pension Management was targeting AUM of ₹15,000 crore in five years, and aiming for ₹1-lakh crore in the next 10 years.

Over the last two decades, there has been robust growth in National Pension System (NPS), which has exceeded ₹ 11.7 lakh crore and growing at a CAGR of about 25-30 per cent.

To encourage wider participat­ion, the PFRDA had also given incentives for private players in the retirement space, giving more flexibilit­y on fees that was low till recently. Although India’s pension assets to GDP is still low, economy watchers expect the country’s overall retirement space to make rapid strides in the coming decades.

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