ATAL PENSION YOJANA SUBSCRIBER’S ENROLMENT CROSSES 2.23 CRORE AT THE END OF FY 2019-20

Atal Pension Yojana (APY) is the guaranteed pension scheme of Government of India administered by Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA), the pension sector watchdog. The scheme allows any Citizen of India between the age group of 18-40 years to join through the bank or post office branches where one has the savings bank account. Under the scheme, a subscriber would receive a minimum guaranteed pension of Rs.1000 to Rs.5000 per month from the age of 60 years, as per contributions made by him till 60 years. The same pension would be paid to the spouse of the subscriber and on the demise of both the subscriber and spouse, the accumulated pension wealth as accumulated till age 60 of the subscriber is returned to the nominee.

The scheme is distributed through 257 registered APY Service Providers (APY-SPs) consisting of Banks and Post Offices. PFRDA regularly advises all its Service Providers to promote the scheme for ensuring its outreach to the ultimate prospective population. All the APY Service Providers namely, public sector, private sector, regional rural, small finance, payment and cooperative banks have participated with full enthusiasm in the promotional campaigns run by PFRDA throughout the year.

Around 69 lac APY accounts were sourced during the FY 2019-20. Enrolments under APY registered a growth of 20% over the number of APY enrolments during FY 2018-19. This is mainly due to better performance of the State Bank of India, Axis Bank and Airtel Payments Bank during FY 2019-20, in comparison to FY 2018-19.

Shri Supratim Bandyopadhyay, Chairman, PFRDA stated that “It is encouraging to see the growing number of 69 lakhs enrolments under Atal Pension Yojana during the financial year 2019-20. APY as a pension scheme designed for unorganized sector workers has accomplished 2.23 crores coverage of Indian citizens, and we plan to extend this scheme to more than 3 crore unorganized workers by end of this fiscal.”

The year-on-year APY-SP’s Category wise number of APY enrolments are as follows (in lacs):

Category of APY-SPs	As on date (*March 31, 2016)	As on date (March 31, 2017)	As on date (March 31, 2018)	As on date (March 31, 2019)	Additions from April 1, 2019 to March 31, 2020	As on date (March 31, 2020)
Public Sector Banks	16.93	30.47	65.53	107.20	49.55	156.75
Private Banks	2.18	4.97	8.74	11.45	4.18	15.63
Small Finance Bank	-	-	-	0.09	0.07	0.16
Payment Bank	-	-	-	0.48	2.96	3.44
Regional Rural Banks	4.76	11.15	19.87	31.71	11.59	43.30
District Co-op Banks	0.21	0.30	0.34	0.39	0.10	0.49
State Co-op Banks	0.01	0.01	0.01	0.01	0.04	0.05
Urban Co-op Banks	0.01	0.04	0.11	0.14	0.03	0.17
DOP	0.75	1.90	2.45	2.71	0.32	3.03
Total	24.85	48.84	97.05	154.18	68.84	223.02

The Top Ten APY-SPs on the basis of enrolments under APY during FY 2019-20 (in lacs):

S. No.	Name of the APY-SPs	Number of Enrolments from April 1, 2019 to March 31, 2020
1	State Bank Of India	17.11
2	Canara Bank	3.85
3	Bank Of India	3.76
4	Bank Of Baroda	3.76
5	Airtel Payments Bank Limited	2.96
6	Central Bank Of India	2.53
7	Axis Bank Ltd	2.50
8	Indian Bank	2.44
9	Andhra Bank	1.89
10	Union Bank Of India	1.87

The Top Ten states having highest enrolments under the APY as on 31^st March 2020 (in lacs):

Sr. No	State Name	Number of APY Enrolments
1	Uttar Pradesh	32.43
2	Bihar	20.81
3	Tamil Nadu	17.36
4	Maharashtra	17.23
5	West Bengal	16.16
6	Karnataka	14.82
7	Andhra Pradesh	13.64
8	Madhya Pradesh	11.80
9	Rajasthan	10.28
10	Gujarat	9.82

Out of the total enrolments as on 31^st March 2020, nearly 73% subscribers have chosen Rs 1000 pension amount. As per the scheme, pension amount chosen initially can be upgraded to higher pension amount up to Rs 5000 by subscribers, during accumulation phase. Further, out of total enrolments as on 31^st March 2020; 43% are female subscribers. Enrolment of female subscribers has seen a good growth in recent years as PFRDA regularly advises all APY-SPs to focus more on eligible female population. It is also observed that out of the total enrollments, 67% subscribers are enrolled between 18 and 30 years while 33% subscribers are enrolled between 31 and 40 years.

Encouraged by the increasing number of enrolments under the Scheme since its inception, PFRDA will continue its endeavor to popularize the scheme through organization of various APY campaigns at national and state level, conduct of townhall meetings, participation in SLBC meetings, advertisements through print & electronic media etc. in the FY 2020-21 to take APY subscriber base to greater heights and contribute towards making India a pensioned society.