SBI operationalises Central Govt PF

Mumbai, Aug 27 (UNI) The new fully owned pension subsidiary of State Bank of India, SBI Pension Funds Pvt Ltd (SBIPFPL), became operational today.

The new initiative of SBI, approved by Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA), will manage the investment of the contributions made by the employees of central government and such of those state governments who choose to join the scheme.

The scheme is applicable to the government employees who joined the service on or after January one, 2004. Central Government has already handed over the corpus to the Fund Manager and 20 state governments have opted to join the scheme. They are yet to hand over the corpus to the Fund Manager.

The investments guidelines are given by the regulator and the investments are overseen by a Trust. The new scheme has scope to improve the returns on the pension contributions. About 85 per cent of the contribution is to be invested in fixed income securities and the remaining 15 per cent could be invested in equities and equity linked mutual funds.

SBIPFPL got the maximum share (55 per cent) of the corpus among the Fund Managers. SBI Funds Management and SBI Life Insurance are co-promoters of the new pension subsidiary, which had the advantage of being able to draw on the expertise of the Bank and its subsidiaries in the investment management.

SBI Chairman O P Bhatt inaugurated the new premises of the SBI Pension Funds Pvt Ltd here, Mr R Chinnaiyan, General Manager from the Bank has been appointed as managing director and chief executive officer of the company.

UNI VK RN VKG1827