ICICI Pru top earner for EPFO with 8.72% returns

ICICI Pru provided the best yield on investments made on behalf of the retirement fund body EPFO during the two-and-half year period ended March 31, 2011, while Reliance Capital gave lowest rate of returns.

The investments made by ICICI Pru yielded returns of 8.72% followed by HSBC AMC (8.64%) and SBI (8.61%).

The lowest return of 8.57% was provided by Reliance Capital, though it was slightly higher than the EPFO's benchmark yield of 8.52%.

The analysis was conducted by Crisil, which was engaged by the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) for the purpose.

The body had engaged the four assets management firms from September 17 in 2008 to March 31, 2011, with a view to improve the yield on its investments so that it could provide better returns on PF deposits to its over 4.72 crore subscribers.

Before the appointment of these four asset management companies (AMCs), SBI was the sole fund manager for the EPFO since the retirement fund body's inception in 1952.

These four fund managers are among the 11 AMCs which are in race to bag the contract for managing EPFO funds for another term of three years beginning July 1.

After the end of the term of existing four fund managers on March 31, 2011, EPFO had decided to engage SBI to manage its funds for three month as interim arrangement till June 30.

The decision was taken by the EPFO's apex decision making body Central Board of Trustee in March because the retirement fund body could not appoint the new fund managers well in time so that they could take over by April 1 this year.

Besides, existing fund managers, seven new firms, including Kotak Securities, Securities Trading Corporation of India, UTI Securities and ICICI Securities, had shown interest in managing EPFO funds.