Pension fund regulator PFRDA on Wednesday said the subscribers can now use the online mode also to exit from the National Pension System (NPS). Under the current process, the NPS subscribers have to physically approach their Points of Presence (POPs) to complete their withdrawal request process and the task is performed offline, it said in a statement.
The subscribers are required to submit the NPS withdrawal forms along with other supporting documents for authorization by POPs, the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) said. "Now in addition to the existing offline process as mentioned above, the subscribers shall also have an online option to submit the withdrawal documents and authorizing their withdrawal request by using OTP/e-sign to make the process seamless in a paperless manner," it said.
In the online process, it said, subscribers associated to a POP will initiate the exit request in Central Record Keeping Agency (CRA) system using login credentials and provide the relevant details of exit namely corpus allocation for lump sum/annuity, Annuity Service Provider (ASP), annuity scheme etc and would upload the withdrawal documents including KYC. The POP would identify the bank account number of the subscriber by 'Instant Bank Account Verification' through penny drop and also verify the uploaded documents.
It said for successful processing of online/offline withdrawal request of NPS subscribers, POPs shall be incentivized with a fee of 0.125 per cent of the corpus with minimum amount of Rs 125 and maximum Rs 500 payable by the subscribers. The CRAs and POPs are advised by PFRDA to develop the required technical functionalities in a time bound manner in the interest of NPS subscribers, it said.