The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA), the regulatory body which oversees the regulation of pensions in India, has announced making it mandatory to submit know your customer (KYC) documents for seamless exit and annuity of the National Pension Scheme (NPS) subscriber.
In a statement, the PFRDA said in collaboration with Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) had simplified the process of purchasing annuity where the annuity service providers shall use the NPS withdrawal form submitted at the time of exit by subscribers at nodal officers for issuing annuity.
The annuity service providers are basically life insurance firms regulated by both PFRDA and IRDAI to serve the NPS beneficiaries with regular periodical income.
The pension regulatory body has said the upload of documents will be mandatory from April 1 this year. Both the subscribers and the nodal officers will have to ensure that the documents uploaded in the user interface are legible.
These are the documents needed for withdrawal of NPS
→ NPS exit/withdrawal form
→ Identity and address proof as mentioned in the withdrawal form
→ Bank account proof
→ Copy of Permanent Retirement Account Number (PRAN) card
Here are the steps to process NPS exit through online mode:
1. The applicant should log into the CRA system.
2. The subscriber will be informed about OTP authentication, authorisation of request by nodal office.
3. The subscribers' details like address, bank details, nominee details etc will be autopopulated from NPS account during request initiation.
4. The subscriber will need to select fund allocation percentage for lump sum/annuity, annuity details.
5. Now the bank account of the subscriber will be verified through online bank account verification.
6. The subscriber needs to mandatorily upload KYC documents (identity and address proof).
7. The subscriber will need to authorise the request by using either OTP or e-sign the request using Aadhaar.
8. On submitting the online request, the exit request along with scanned documents will be made available in the concerned POP CRA login.
9. The verification and authorisation of request will be carried out on the basis of scanned documents on CRA interface.
10. Post-authorisation, the request will be executed.