EPFO to appoint separate custodians for investments

In a bid to increase transparency in its dealings,the Employees Provident Fund Organisation has decided to appoint separate custodians for its investments,while also extending the deadline for selecting fund managers for its over Rs 3.5 lakh crore corpus to August 31.

The decisions were taken at a meeting of the EPFOs Central Board of Trustees on Friday. The Board also approved a proposal for appointment of custodian of securities of EPFO. This measure was taken to separate the custodial services from the Fund managers to bring further transparency in the management of EPFO corpus, Labour and Employment Minister Mallikarjun Kharge,who is also the chairman of the CBT said. Labour secretary PC Chaturvedi said that the custodian can be any financial institution or bank. They can be any of the entities that have applied for the role of fund managers. But we will not select one of the fund managers as a custodian, he said. The CBT also extended the deadline for selecting fund managers to August 31 while continuing with SBI as the sole fund manager for the period. It was earlier scheduled to select the fund managers by the end of this month.

However,EPFO officials said that process of appointing fund managers would be completed by July 20. The technical bids of fund managers were scheduled to be opened today and financial bids are likely to be opened on July 8. We will hold a meeting of the CBT in the last week of July to approve the appointments, an EPFO official said.

Besides,the four AMCs who had managed EPFO corpus including ICICI Pru,HSBC AMC,Reliance Capital and SBI,seven new firms,including Kotak Securities,Securities Trading Corporation,UTI Securities and ICICI Securities,have expressed interest in managing the retirement fund.