The Central Board of Trustees (CBT) of the Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) will meet on Thursday to finalise the names of new fund managers for the Rs 3.5-lakh crore corpus.
The meeting will be chaired by the Union Labour and Employment Minister, Mr Mallikarjun Kharge.
Extended date
In June, the CBT, a tripartite body consisting of representatives of the Government, employers and employees, had extended the date for appointment of fund managers till August.
This move resulted in State Bank of India being the single entity left to manage the funds so far.
This year, the EPFO has roped in rating agency and consultancy firm Crisil, for the appointment of fund managers.
Financial bids in this regard were to be opened on July 8, a Labour Ministry official said.
New firms
Sources said some new firms had evinced interest in managing the corpus this year. Among the names doing the rounds are Kotak Mahindra Asset Management Company, Securities Trading Corporation of India, UTI Asset Management Company, Birla Sun Life Asset Management Company, ICICI Securities Primary Dealership and Franklin Templeton Asset Management.
Last year, the retirement funds of over four lakh provident fund subscribers in the country were managed by four asset management companies, ICICI Pru, HSBC, Reliance Capital and SBI, whose term ended in March 31 this year.