August 2022
26Aug

Climate Risk and Indian Pension Funds

Since Reserve Bank of India (RBI) published its discussion paper on climate risk for stakeholder consultation it is somewhat puzzling to notice that other financial regulators have not taken a similar approach to gauge the extent of climate risk in their respective domains. Climate risk, being a systemic risk, will impact the entire financial sector. Let us take the case of pension funds. Globally, since the signing of UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), major pension funds such as the Ontario...

August 26, 2022
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04Aug

Sensitive data of Indian pension fund holders exposed online

A huge cache of data containing the full name, bank account number and nominee information of pension fund holders in India has surfaced online. Security researcher Bob Diachenko found two separate IP addresses storing more than 288 million records — with some 280 million records available under one IP address and about 8.4 million a part of the second IP address. Both IP addresses were publicly exposing the data to the internet but were not protected by passwords, the researcher...

August 4, 2022
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July 2022
08Jul

Measurement of ESG Performance: A Study of Indian Companies

By Preeti Sharma, Priyanka Pandey, Vijay Kumar Jain & R. C. Dangwal The present study aims to construct an inclusive, Literature-based, and statistically vetted environmental, social and corporate governance disclosure (ESGD) index, measure the item-wise, theme-wise, and factor-wise ESG performance of the top 80 Indian companies for the period 2013-2016, and examine item-wise, theme-wise and factor-wise variations in ESGD. Content analysis is used to measure the ESG disclosures of the sample companies. To test the variations, skewness, kurtosis, Levene’s, Chi-square,...

July 8, 2022
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June 2022
30Jun

India. PFRDA to go fully digital in operations, invites bids from IT vendors to launch tech project

Pension fund regulator PFRDA has initiated steps to digitise its operations through the 'Technology Architecture (TARCH) Project', inviting bids from IT solutions providers to launch the project. PFRDA's most of the operations are currently manual in nature, and digitisation is partial. PFRDA has decided to digitise and automate its operations through Technology Architecture (TARCH) Project, which is envisioned to be a modular and API (Application Programming Interface) based platform, PFRDA said in a bid document seeking interest from reputed IT...

June 30, 2022
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16Jun

India. Government to launch AI-driven portal for distributing pension payments

In order to seamlessly process, track and disburse pensions, the Department of Pension and Pensioners' Welfare will soon launch an Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled the common portal for the benefit of pensioners and elderly citizens. Union Minister Jitendra Singh said that the AI-supported portal, 'Bhavishya', will send automatic alerts to pensioners and superannuated senior citizens, including retired paramilitary personnel. Apart from enabling constant contact with pensioners and their associations across India, the portal will also receive their inputs, suggestions as well...

June 16, 2022
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May 2022
30May

India. Donate-a-pension retirement plan finds few takers

The government's Donate-a-Pension initiative to build up a retirement kitty for unorganised workers, including domestic helps, has failed to garner enough responses. The number of beneficiaries enrolled under the Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maan-dhan (PM-SYM) scheme has slowed considerably in fiscal year 2022-23, strengthening the case for a major revamp of the initiative. Only 14,518 unorganised workers enrolled under the scheme between April 1 and May 25, government data showed, bringing average enrolment in a month to a little over 7,000....

May 30, 2022
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23May

India. National Pension System: All NPS schemes will now indicate risk profiles

In order to enable National Pension System (NPS) subscribers to make informed decisions on allocating their contribution in various asset classes, pension funds will have to disclose risk profiling of all the schemes on their websites within 15 days from the close of each quarter. The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) has issued guidelines underlining six levels of risks—low, low to moderate, moderate, moderately high, high and very high. Based on the scheme characteristics, pension funds will have...

May 23, 2022
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April 2022
13Apr

Pinbox gets seed capital from ADB Ventures to expand micro pension coverage in India

ADB Ventures, a platform of Asian Development Bank, has provided seed funding to Pinbox for expanding micro pension coverage in India. Read also Kenya. Pensions raise investments in offshore, private equity Pinbox works to address friction and accessibility challenges in delivering micro pension and insurance solutions to underserved informal sector workers, ADB Ventures said in a statement. It provides a ready-to-deploy micro pension technology platform globally to governments and regulators who are seeking to expand pension and insurance coverage .. Read also Australia....

April 13, 2022
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March 2022

Labour Ministry launches ‘Donate-a-Pension’ initiative: Check details
08Mar

India. Labour Ministry launches ‘Donate-a-Pension’ initiative: Check details

Union Labour and Employment Minister Bhupender Yadav launched the 'Donate-a-Pension' program under Pradhan Mantri Shram on Monday. This move is to make the process of creating and contributing to a pension fund for support staff easier. Union Labour and Employment Minister, Bhupendra Yadav tweet, “Launched ‘Donate-a-Pension’ programme at my residence by donating to the gardener. It is an initiative under (PM-SYM) pension scheme where citizens can donate the premium contribution of their immediate support staff such as domestic workers, drivers,...

March 8, 2022
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February 2022
09Feb

India’s APY scheme sees gradual increase in membership

The number of subscribers under the government-administered pension scheme, the Atal Pension Yojana (APY), has exceeded 7.1m as of 24 January this year, Parliament has been told. “As per information received from PFRDA, 7,106,743 subscribers have been enrolled under APY up to 24 January 2022, during the financial year 2021-22,” Minister of State for Finance Bhagwat Karad said in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Parliament. In FY20 (the financial year ended 31 March 2020), there...

February 9, 2022
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