Guidelines on Price Discovery Process for the charges of CRAs for NPS & UPS Subscribers w.e.f. 01.10.2025: PFRDA Circular

Guidelines on Price Discovery Process for the charges of Central Recordkeeping Agencies (CRAs) for the services rendered by them to the NPS & UPS, NPS-Lite, APY, NPS-Vatsalya subscribers w.e.f. 01.10.2025: PFRDA Circular dated 15.09.2025

PENSION FUND REGULATORY AND DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY

CIRCULAR

PFRDA/2025/06/REG-CRA/01

15 September 2025

To

All Central Recordkeeping Agencies (CRAs)

Madam/Sir,

Guidelines on Price Discovery Process for the charges of Central Recordkeeping Agencies (CRAs) for the services rendered by them to the subscribers

1. Regulation 22 of the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (Central Recordkeeping Agency) Regulations, 2015 and its amendments thereof (hereinafter referred to as “CRA Regulations”) states that:

(1) A central recordkeeping agency may collect service charges plus applicable taxes, for providing services to the subscribers of the pension schemes covered under the Act. The service charges shall be determined through a price discovery process initiated by the Authority.

(2) The process mentioned under sub-regulation (1) shall be initiated by the Authority, upon notification of these provisions or regulations and thereafter upon conclusion of every five year period, from the last of such price discovery process…”

2. In accordance with the aforementioned regulations, the applicable charges for the services provided by CRAs to the subscribers under the pension schemes regulated / administered by the Authority are hereby revised as under:

Table 1: Charge Structure for Government Sector (NPS & UPS)

*For accounts having Nil balance, the Annual Maintenance Charge shall be zero.
#e-PRAN Kit should be the default option at the time of account opening.

Table 2: Charge Structure for APY & NPS Lite

Table 3: Charge Structure for Private Sector (NPS & NPS Vatsalya)

*such reduced/negotiated charges shall not be below the upper cap stipulated in respect of the immediately preceding slab.

3. Further, the following may be noted:

a) Charges stipulated above are the upper cap and no CRA shall charge more than the amount mentioned in Table 1, Table 2 and Table 3 above.

b) CRAs shall be free to reduce the charges any time or based on the negotiations, if any, with the employers/subscribers/PoPs, such that the reduced/negotiated charges shall not be below the upper cap fixed in respect of the immediately preceding slab.

c) For the Private Sector, a pension scheme resides in an Account and each Account attracts a charge based on slab-wise corpus, as detailed in Table 3.

d) The charges stipulated under Table 1 for UPS subscribers under Government Sector are applicable only during the accumulation phase. The charges applicable for UPS subscribers, if any, during payout / decumulation phase shall be separately stipulated by PFRDA at a later stage.

e) In case of any new services introduced by CRAs, it may recover actual charges without any markup on utilization of such services by the subscribers, subject to the approval of PFRDA.

f) CRAs shall display the charge structure on their official website/mobile application.

4. This circular herewith supersedes the circular no. PFRDA/2020/22/REG-CRA/3 dated 15 June 2020 issued on ‘Guidelines for Price Discovery Mechanism for the Central Recordkeeping Agencies (CRAs) for the services rendered by them to the subscribers, as a part of the Selection of Central Recordkeeping Agencies’. The revised charges structure shall come into effect from 1st October 2025.

5. This circular is issued in exercise of the powers conferred under Section 14 of the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority Act, 2013.

Yours Sincerely,

Digitally Sd/-
2025.09.15 19:24:58
(Gurminder Kaur)
General Manager