EPFO to tap higher returns from the equity exposure has decided to put 15% of the total corpus into equities and in lieu of the same it had been decided to provide ETFs units to its subscribers. The credit shall be effected in a matter of 3 months time.

Hailed as a good news, after the initial task of crediting ETF units is done with, employees will be allowed to increase or decrease investment into stocks from their EPF accounts.
Last year, CBT approved an accounting policy for crediting EPF units apart from the cash component. The said move will benefit as many as 5 crore EPFO subscribers.

EPFO's Central Provident Fund Commissioner V P Joy is quoted as saying in a PTI report, "We have to develop a software to credit ETFs into the PF accounts of subscribers. It will take 2 to 3 months".

He added, "Once we do that we would go for next phase to give an option to members to increase or decrease investments in the stocks".

In regard to the ETF unit allotment, the department decided that any investment into equities over and above the mandated 15% would be held by the EPFO. The pension body started investment into equities in the year 2015. The ETF investment from investible deposits has yielded the EPFO body a return of 17.23% as on Feb 28, 2018.

With PTI Inputs