EPFO trustees to appoint new fund managers on 19 Feb

New Delhi: Retirement fund body EPFO’s apex decision making body the Central Board of Trustees (CBT) is likely to appoint new fund managers on 19 February for 3-year term beginning 1 April. [caption id=“attachment_2073869” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. Reuters[/caption] The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation has shortlisted six fund managers last month – HSBC AMC, ICICI Prudential, ICICI Securities Primary Dealership, Reliance Capital AMC, Birla Sun Life AMC and UTI AMC – on the basis of technical as well as financial bids. “The 206th meeting of the CBT has been scheduled on 19 February” an office order said. “During the meeting the CBT headed by Labour Minister is likely to consider and approve the proposal for appointing fund managers for a three year period beginning 1 April,” a source said. The six players had qualified for initial technical bids opened on 9 January. They had also cleared the financial bids which were opened on January 20 during a meeting of EPFO’s advisory body Finance Audit and Investment Committee (FAIC). According to the information available these six fund mangers are competing fiercely as their financial bids are low and close. Now the proposal vetted by FAIC will be placed before the CBT for appointment of fund managers on the basis of technical and financial bids on 19 February. SBI had also applied but since it has already been nominated as fund manager for another term, it need not participate in the bidding. EPFO has a subscriber base of over five crore and receives over Rs 70,000 crore as incremental deposits every year. During the current financial year, EPFO’s incremental deposits are estimated to be Rs 79,000 crore. EPFO is managing a corpus of Rs 6.5 lakh crore. EPFO’s funds at present are being managed by SBI, HSBC AMC, Reliance Capital AMC and ICICI Securities Primary Dealership. The term of these fund managers ends on 31 March 2015. PTI