At ₹11.73-lakh cr., NPS assets surge 27.85% year-on-year as of April 20

Aided by a rally in equity markets, National Pension System (NPS) assets under management (AUM) recorded a robust 27.85% y-o-y growth as of April 20 at ₹11.73 lakh crore, latest PFRDA data showed.

Overall AUM, including that of Atal Pension Yojana (APY), was ’at compared with end-of-March level of ₹11.73 lakh crore.

The number of new NPS and APY subscriber registrations in the rst 20 days of this month stood at just 51,331, data showed.

On a y-o-y basis, the number of subscribers in the non-government sector as of April 20 grew by 8.75 lakh, while the increase in the government sector was just 7.11 lakh.

In 2023-24, as many as 9.47 lakh new subscribers on-boarded NPS from the non-government sector. Of these, as many as 8.1 lakh subscribers were from the ‘all-citizen model’ and 1.37 lakh corporate employees.

The overall robust NPS assets growth in recent years has been driven by both buoyant equity markets and a widening NPS subscriber base.

The non-government sector — corporates and retail — saw a 38.88% y -o-y growth in its NPS assets as of April 20 this year to ₹2.27 lakh crore. NPS assets of the government sector increased by 25.35% to ₹9.04 lakh crore.

The number of new government employees who on-boarded NPS in scal 2023-24 stood at 7.10 lakh.

The pace of asset growth has been higher for the nongovernment sector than for government employees due to the higher allocation towards equity among the former category of subscribers.

Equity assets constitute about 18% of the overall AUM while for the retail and corporate segment, it is relatively higher at about 4045% of the AUM.

Growth has ostensibly slowed in the retail segment given the adoption of new tax regime by several taxpayers thus neutralising the tax bene ts NPS o£ers, industry insiders said.

A surge in equities aided pension funds log a scorching average annual return of 33.13% as of April 19, surpassing corporate bonds over fourfold and outperforming government securities and State government schemes, the PFRDA data showed.

(The writer is with Hindu businessline)

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