‘Less exciting long-term savings crucial for financial security in old age’: CEA encourages pension investment — SkimNews
Get the Finance newsletter
Daily finance — markets, central banks, M&A, the prints that move money. Free.
- CEA V Anantha Nageswaran urged Indians to shift from short-term trading to long-term savings, saying pension assets are crucial for financial security in old age, speaking virtually at an NPS Diwas event in Delhi.
- The National Pension System (NPS) corpus stood at ₹18 lakh crore as of September, allocated 47% to government securities, 28% to equity, and 21% to corporate debt.
- Economic Survey data cited by Nageswaran showed equity and mutual funds' share in annual household savings rose from about 2% in FY12 to around 15% in FY25, while bank deposits fell from over 58% to about 35%.
- Monthly SIP flows climbed from under ₹4,000 crore in FY17 to over ₹28,000 crore in the first eight months of FY26, yet the share of pension and insurance assets in household savings stayed flat between FY19 and FY24.
- India's pension assets are roughly 17% of GDP, against at least 80% in OECD peer countries — a gap Nageswaran flagged as signaling substantial room for expansion.
- PFRDA is developing retirement income schemes with assured payouts so individuals over 60 can convert their accumulated corpus into lifetime, inflation-indexed steady income.
- Financial Services Secretary Sanjay Lohiya urged pension fund managers to treat pension funds differently from mutual funds and expressed hope domestic pension pools will eventually become "patient capital" for infrastructure, like foreign pension funds.
Why it matters: For an ageing workforce, the 17%-vs-80%+ pension-to-GDP gap means millions of Indian retirees could face inadequate post-60 income. PFRDA's new assured-payout annuity scheme is the most concrete policy response, while the flat FY19–FY24 pension share of household savings shows the SIP boom has not translated into retirement security.
Ask SkimNews
