The youngest of the big-four regulators. PFRDA runs the National Pension System and Atal Pension Yojana — the retirement money of government employees, since 2004, and any citizen who opts in. Its core consumer problem: subscribers take all the market risk, while fund managers take management fees on other people's retirement.
RegTrac Brief · 2026-09-13 · Statutory regulator · register as of 12 September 2026
What changed
- 2025-06-20 — Sivasubramanian Ramann assumes charge as PFRDA Chairperson (20 Jun 2025) (Leadership source).
- Chairperson: Sivasubramanian Ramann (since 2025-06-20 — Former Deputy CAG and CTO Office of CAG) (appointment source).
- Register position as rebuilt on 12 September 2026; every line above carries its own source.
Why it matters
- Registration and penalty powers over pension funds, CRAs and PoPs
- Investment-pattern regulations — how much of your money goes to equity, corporate debt, government paper, AIFs
- Subscriber-protection regulations (2022): exit norms, service standards, withdrawal timelines
- Scheme design: the 2025 assured-payout and inflation-indexed NPS products were shaped through expert panels the chairperson convenes
- Statute and mandate: PFRDA Act, 2013 (statutory w.e.f. 1 Feb 2014; interim body since 2003) — PFRDA official site · RegTrac register entry.
Who lobbies these decisions, and what consultation comments were filed, is the missing third layer — LobbyWatch (planned) — because regulators here do not systematically publish their comment trails; the accountability gaps are catalogued in the RegTrac register.
Who is affected
- Grievance route: NPS Ombudsman under PFRDA (Redressal of Subscriber Grievance) Regulations, 2015; CRA helplines (PFRDA site).
- Fund-manager choice matters less than tier and scheme choice: the government default scheme exists for people who do not want to pick.
- At exit, annuity purchase is mandatory for a large share of the corpus — annuity pricing is set by insurers regulated by IRDAI, not PFRDA. Your pension regulator does not control your pension payout.
- The full route, with the register's own notes on escalation, is in the RegTrac register entry for PFRDA.
What to watch
- Pension funds are subsidiaries of the same fund houses and insurers whose products they "compete" on — fee and default-scheme design are the places to watch.
- Product design by expert panel (assured payout, inflation-linked NPS) is good process, but panel composition and submissions are not published.
- Coverage push toward informal workers via UPI-based micro-contributions will make PFRDA a mass-market DPI regulator — consumer protection staffing has not visibly scaled to match.
- Every watchpoint above is tracked against the RegTrac register entry for PFRDA, as rebuilt on 12 September 2026; no line here rests on information the register does not carry.
Evidence
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