Atal Pension Yojana finds 62 lakh takers in 2 years

The government's social security scheme Atal Pension Yojana (APY) has reached a subscriber base of 62 lakh in a time span of two years since its launch, an official statement said on Wednesday.

"At a time when the interest rate on various financial instruments including savings bank is declining, Atal Pension Yojana as a pension scheme offers a guaranteed rate of 8 per cent assured return for the subscribers and also the opportunity of higher earnings in case the rate of return is higher than 8 per cent at the time of maturity after staying invested in the scheme for 20-42 years," the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) said.

"Increasing enrolment is attributed to financialisation of assets and driving the people to pension products which has government implicit guarantee to give an assured pension to the subscriber, spouse and return of corpus to the nominee," it added.

The PFRDA's objective is to cover the maximum possible population uncovered by any pension scheme under the APY scheme so that India can move from a pension-less to a pensioned society and the citizens can live a life of dignity in their vulnerable years, the statement noted.

The State Bank of India (SBI) has 51,000 APY accounts and other prominent banks like Canara Bank has 32,306 APY accounts while Andhra Bank has 29,057 APY accounts.

In other private banks category, Karnataka Bank has 2,641 APY accounts. In Regional Rural Banks (RRB) category, Allahabad UP Gramin Bank has 28,609 APY accounts followed by Madhya Bihar Gramin Bank at 5,056 APY accounts, Baroda Uttar Pradesh Gramin Bank at 3,013 APY accounts, Kashi Gomti Samyut Gramin Bank at 2,847 APY accounts and Punjab Gramin Bank at 2,194 APY accounts.

The PFRDA recently organised a national-level pension mobilisation campaign "One Nation One Pension" from August 2-19.