Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Pension fund manager: Request for proposals issued

New Delhi: The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) has issued request for proposals (RFPs) to four public sector financial institutions which had evinced interest for the role of pension fund managers (PFMs) under the new pension scheme (NPS).
All the four short-listed entities - Life Insurance Corporation of India, State Bank of India, UTI AMC and IDBI Capital — have been given time until July 4 to submit the detailed technical and financial bids.
"All the four companies have collected the RFPs and they have time till July 4 by which they have to give detailed technical and financial parameters they would operate if they were chosen as the fund manager," a PFRDA official, who did not wish to be identified, told Business Line.
The official added that it could well be a tight finish as all the four companies have strong credentials.
Guidelines
Giving brief guidelines on the technical parameters, the official said, "The financial institutions have to submit details on their track record, the exact corpus they managed till now and details on the returns that they have been able to earn in the last couple of years," the official said.
It may be recalled that the companies which managed assets worth more than Rs 10,000 crore were eligible to submit expressions of interest (EoIs), but then need not have stated the exact corpus they managed.
They have also to give details on the IT infrastructure that they have and how they propose to take it forward and details on their back office operations.
In the financial parameters, they have to submit the management fee they would be charging.
RFP evaluation
"Based on the evaluation of the RFPs, we would finally identify 2 or 3 PFMs. The whole process might be completed by July 20," the official said.
The official, however, said that as of now based on the EoI, none of the companies have given details if they would like foreign investments in the new entity that would be formed.
Foreign investment
"We would only know once the proposals are submitted back to us if any of the companies would like to have direct or indirect foreign investment not exceeding 26 per cent of its paid-up share capital. But based on the EoIs none of them have indicated on this issue," the official said.
Once selected, the fund managers will have to offer alternative products to employees including risk-free options under which all funds would be invested in government securities and share-market linked products with variable returns as well.
Source: The Hindu Business Line

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