To join and contribute to the Atal Pension Yojana (APY), a government-sponsored pension plan is all the more easier and simpler now.
Airtel Payments Bank has launched Atal Pension Yojana for its savings account holders and has become the first payments bank in India to offer Government of India backed Atal Pension Yojana. APY is administered by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA).
If you are already an Airtel Payments Bank account holder, then, according to the company, the subscription to APY may be done through a simple, secure and paperless process that will take only a few minutes at 50,000 banking points across India. Going forward, Airtel Payments Bank aims to expand the availability of the scheme at 100,000 of its banking points.
An initiative by the Government of India, Atal Pension Yojana is primarily aimed at providing pension benefits and social security for workers in the unorganized sector. To contribute towards APY, one needs to mandatorily have a savings bank account as the future contributions need to be debited automatically from the account.
APY is based on defined benefit for providing a guaranteed minimum monthly pension of Rs. 1000 or Rs. 2000 or Rs. 3000 or Rs. 4000 or Rs. 5000 at the age of 60 years based on pension amount chosen. The scheme is available to account holders between the age of 18 to 40 and offers a minimum guaranteed monthly pension of between Rs. 1,000 and Rs. 5,000, depending on the customer’s contribution which starts at as low as Rs.42 per month. In addition, the spouse gets a monthly pension after the death of the subscriber and the nominee gets the corpus amount of up to Rs. 8.5 lakh in the event of the death of the subscriber and the spouse.
As per the APY rules, from the age of 60 years, a subscriber would receive a minimum guaranteed pension of Rs.1000 to Rs.5000 per month, depending upon his contribution. The same pension would be paid to the spouse of the subscriber and on the demise of both the subscriber and spouse, the accumulated pension wealth is returned to the nominee.
Illustratively, someone at age 30 looking to have a pension of Rs 5,000 from age 60, will have to contribute Rs 577 each month till age 60. A monthly pension of Rs 5,000 will be paid till the lifetime of both spouses and then Rs 8.5 lakh will be returned to nominees. At age 35, the monthly contribution will become Rs 902 with other benefits remaining the same.
With a view to providing flexibility to the subscribers of APY with seasonal or irregular income, besides the monthly mode of payment, quarterly and half yearly mode of payment of contributions have been provided in the Scheme.
In case of premature death of Subscriber (death before 60 years of age), spouse of the subscriber has been given an option to continue contributing to APY account of the subscriber, for the remaining vesting period, till the original subscriber would have attained the age 60 years.
Although APY comes with assured monthly pension till lifetime, the maximum limit is capped and hence do not entirely rely on this scheme. In addition, save through equity mutual funds or NPS to create a sizeable corpus for retirement.
For more updates: Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter & Instagram
