Riding on buoyant equity markets, National Pension System (NPS) assets grew 26 per cent year-on-year to touch ₹11.94 lakh crore as of May 11, latest PFRDA data showed.
This overall AUM including that of Atal Pension Yojana (APY) — slightly short of ₹12 lakh-crore milestone mark —was higher than end March 2024 level of ₹11.73 lakh crore.
The frenetic pace of overall NPS assets growth can be gauged from the fact that only in August last year the NPS assets had touched the ₹10-lakh crore mark.
NPS took six years and six months to reach the milestone of ₹1 lakh crore AUM after its implementation in 2009. It then took 4 years and 11 months to further increase AUM to ₹5 lakh crore.
NPS AUM had doubled to ₹10 lakh crore as of August 25 last year from ₹5 lakh crore in a span of just 2 years and 10 months.
NUMBER OF SUBSCRIBERS
The number of new NPS and APY subscriber registrations till May 12 this fiscal stood at 94,009, PFRDA data showed.
On a year-on-year basis, the number of subscribers in the non-government sector as of May 11 grew by 8.77 lakh, while increase in the government sector was 7.17 lakh.
In 2023-24, as many as 9.47 lakh new subscribers onboarded NPS from the non-government sector. Of this, as many as 8.10 lakh subscribers were from ‘all citizen model ‘ and 1.37 lakh were corporate employees.
The overall robust NPS assets growth in recent years has been driven by both buoyant equity markets and widening NPS subscriber base as more working age Indians take up to retirement planning in a serious manner.
The non-government sector —corporates and retail —saw a 26.42 per cent year on year growth in its NPS assets as of May 11 this year to ₹2.41 lakh crore.
On the other hand, NPS assets of the government sector was up 24.12 percent at ₹9.19 lakh crore.
The number of new government employees who onboarded NPS in fiscal 2023-24 stood at 7.10 lakh.
EQUITY RETURNS SIZZLE
Roaring bull markets in equities has helped pension funds record a scorching average annual return of 29.12 percent as of May 10 surpassing corporate bonds by over fourfold, and outperforming Government Securities and State Government Schemes
Over the past three years, pension funds achieved an average return of 17.51 per cent in equities, with returns since NPS inception coming in at 13.38 per cent for equity investments.
As of May 10, corporate bonds recorded annual return of 7.15 per cent, while Government securities saw a return of 7.49 per cent.
The annual return from Central and State Government schemes stood at 9.91 per cent.
The total number of NPS and APY subscribers as of May 11stood at 7.41 crore, up 16.29 per cent over 6.38 crore a year ago.