Pension regulator enables online onboarding through bank portal

Savings bank customers of banks may soon get another channel for online onboarding to Atal Pension Yojana (APY) – a government-backed pension scheme targeted at the unorganised sector – without having to use internet banking or mobile app.

Pension regulator PFRDA has now allowed APY-Points of Presence (PoPs) to introduce an alternative channel for online on-boarding of their existing savings account customers through the bank’s own web portal.

At present, some banks provide online APY account opening through net banking or mobile app. However, a large number of bank customers who are eligible and can be enrolled under APY, do not use the mobile app or netbanking facility. In such cases, these bank customers are not able to open an APY account through online/digital mode.

To solve this issue, PFRDA has enabled the facility of ‘Online Paperless On-boarding of Subscribers using the Web Portal’, sources said.

This new facility is expected to help PFRDA realise its aim of having an overall APY subscriber base of 30 million by March 2021. It maybe recalled that as many 3 million new APY subscribers were added during the pandemic period so far this fiscal.

Recently, PFRDA Chairman Supratim Bandyopadhyay had said that banks play a crucial role in expanding the APY subscriber base.