EPFO invested Rs 34,208 cr in ETFs during Apr-Oct: Centre tells Parliament

Retirement fund body EPFO has invested Rs 34,207.93 crore in exchange traded funds (ETFs) during the April-October period this fiscal year, Parliament was informed on Monday.

According to a written reply to Lok Sabha by Minister of State for Labour & Employment Shobha Karandlaje, the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) had invested Rs 57,184.24 crore in the ETFs.

The total corpus of various funds managed by EPFO was Rs 24.75 lakh crore as on March 31, 2024, including debt investments of Rs 22,40,922.30 crore and Rs 2,34,921.49 crore in ETFs.

The minister told the House that the EPFO does not invest directly in any of the individual stocks in the equity market.

The EPFO regularly invests in equity markets through ETFs replicating BSE-Sensex and NSE NIFTY-50 indices, she stated.

In addition, EPFO has also invested from time to time in ETFs constructed specifically for disinvestment of shareholding of the Government of India in body corporates, namely ETFs tracking Bharat 22 and CPSE Indices, she stated.

EPFO has no direct investment in equity shares of any of the listed/unlisted companies in the equity market.

EPFO has started investment in ETF from August 2015 onwards.

In another reply to the House, the minister said a pilot run of the new Centralized Pension Payments System (CPPS) under EPS (employees' pension scheme) was completed on October 29 and 30, 2024 with the disbursement of more than Rs 11 crore for October to over 49,000 EPS Pensioners of Jammu, Srinagar, and Karnal regions.

The CPPS enables pensioners to receive their pensions from any bank, any branch, anywhere in the country.

Further, she said the process reform to fast-track smaller claims by automating claim processing up to Rs 1 lakh, has been implemented by EPFO.

Over 1,35,74,450 claims have been auto settled from April 1 to November 26 in the ongoing financial year, she added.

In response to reports of slowness faced by internal EPFO users in processing claims, several steps to improve performance, including upgrade of operating system and database versions and performance tuning have been taken, she explained.

The implementation of the Centralized IT Enabled System (CITES) 2.01 has been entrusted to C-DAC, an autonomous society under the aegis of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, she told the House.

EPFO is continuously enhancing its IT capabilities and simplifying processes to provide better services to its Members, she stated.