Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation appointed 4 Mangers for 3.5 trillion Pension Fund Corpus

The labour ministry-controlled Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) on 14 July 2011 appointed four fund managers for its 3.5 trillion pension fund corpus. EPFO however dropped top performer ICICI Prudential Asset Management Co. Ltd from the list.

The central board of trustees (CBT), the apex decision-making body of the EPFO in its meeting in New Delhi, decided to appoint State Bank of India (SBI), Reliance Capital, HSBC Asset Management and ICICI Securities Primary Dealership Ltd. The CBT after consideration approved four fund managers for managing EPFO funds for a period of three years beginning 1 September 2011. The selection procedure was based on technical and financial bidding parameters.

The performance of the managers will be reviewed after one year though the appointment is for three years. CBT will decide on retaining them for the full three years based on that. Apart from ICICI Securities, the other three worked with EPFO earlier.

Between 17 September 2008 and 31 March 2011, ICICI Prudential AMC was the top performer among the EPFO fund managers with an interest yield of 8.72%. SBI gave 8.61%, HSBC Capital 8.57% on funds invested in debt instruments, 8.64% and Reliance including government securities and bonds.

Of the total corpus of Rs 3.5 trillion and an incremental fund of Rs 30000 crore per year, 35% will be managed by SBI, 25% by ICICI Securities and the remaining 40% will be managed equally by Reliance and HSBC.