Atal Pension Yojana: Know the Guidelines of PFRDA to Exit Prematurely

The Atal Pension Yojana is a pension scheme, which is run by the government of India & is operated by the Pension Fund Regulatory & Development Authority (PFRDA) for the people, who are looking to invest in a fixed pension scheme during their retirement period, this scheme of APY is an attractive option for them.

In order to increase the acceptability of the Atal Pension Yojana scheme among the people, PFRDA has proposed modifications in premature exit processing for the benefit of subscribers. This is according to the circular of a PFRDA, which was issued on 3rd September.

It is said that “the existing mode of a premature withdrawal under the APY is examined from time to time by PFRDA based on the inputs or suggestions received from various stakeholders & the changes are proposed with suitable technological intervention”.

This scheme of Atal Pension Yojana will introduce instant bank account verification in the interest of underlying the subscribers for the orderly processing of their exit requests. There are guidelines, issued by the Authority for facilitating the timely transfer of withdrawal amount in the bank account of APY subscribers & also as additional due diligence to protect their corpus lying in a Permanent Retirement Account Number (PRAN).

There could be 2 Scenarios at the Time of an Exit and these are as follows: 

If SB Account details of subscribers during the time of Onboarding & Exit are the Same

• The APY subscribers incorporate a field indicating the active status of the savings banks accounts in the revised exit file format provided by the CRA, which is mandatory from 15^th September 2021.

• The Instant Bank Account verification by penny drop shall be undertaken by the CRA to verify the operative status of a savings account as part of enhanced due diligence.

• The above changes are implemented to enable the CRA system to process premature withdrawal requests where the associated SB Account is operative so as to ensure the receipt of APY account closure in the SB account.

• And, if the associated savings account is closed or dormant, then the modified process ensures the preservation of a subscriber’s contribution in PRAN itself to generate the optimum market-based returns.

If Savings Account details at the time of Onboarding & Exit are not same, then different Account Numbers of Same Bank or the Different Bank

• Subscribers are advised that the APY closure proceeds be credited to the same bank account number & may accept the request with a different account number or account of a different bank only as an exception. These requests are accompanied by proof of an alternate account number, which is acceptable to the bank.

• The Instant Bank Account verification by a penny drop shall be undertaken by the CRA as part of enhanced due diligence including the name matching between PRAN & Bank Account Number.

• The request of an exit with the mismatches or with the unsuccessful account verification, post penny drop is to be confirmed by the respective APY subscriber for further processing of exit requests by the CRA.

• Subscribers are to be educated to keep their respective bank account active, when they submit their premature withdrawal request & the request is processed then a suitable undertaking can be obtained from the subscriber as part of the withdrawal request.

• Applicable charges from the instant bank account verification would be recovered by the CRA from the respective PRAN for reimbursement to the service provider. The prevailing charges for verifying the bank number through penny drop is Rs 2.40 & tax.

• It is better for APY subscribers to keep their respective Bank account active, when they submit their premature withdrawal request, till their request for the premature withdrawal request is being processed.