The Pension Fund Regulatory & Development Authority (PFRDA) has come out with a clarification on nomination rules to be followed after the death of a National Pension System (NPS) subscriber
“Nomination can be made only by the subscriber. However, there are special provisions enabled as per exit regulations for treating the nomination as made in the ser-vice records to protect the interest of the subscribers who were employed and covered under NPS through their employers,” according to the PFRDA circular, issued on October 22, 2022.
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The following points are clarified for the benefit of various intermediaries which are associated with exit processing viz. nodal officers of government/ non-government sector, POPs and NPST in order to facilitate seamless claim processing.
Any changes in the nomination post death of the subscriber using the deceased sub-scribers‘ login credentials shall be treated as invalid.
All those cases with those invalid nominations, the valid nomination made by the Subscriber (valid nomination are those which fulfil nomination rules defined by PFRDA as provided in its exit Regulations & the same provided at Annexure) before death shall be considered for claim processing.
Those cases with invalid nomination and as defined in Exit Regulations 3(c) & 4(c) in government and non-government sector, respectively, the claims need to be processed by the respective intermediary and the eligible corpus has to be paid to the legal heirs.
Subscribers covered under government sector (sub-clause(c) of Regulation 3) and corporate sub-clause(c) of Regulation 4, where no valid nomination exists in accordance with exit regulations: At the time of exit of such subscriber on account of death, the nomination, if any existing in the records of such subscriber with his or her employer for the purpose of receiving other admissible terminal benefits shall be treated as nomination exercised for the purposes of receiving benefits under the NPS as per the provisions of Exit Regulations 32(xii).
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The intermediaries associated with processing of claims are to be provided with the required functionality/ system interface in their user login by CRAs to capture the claimant details viz legal heirs or nominee as per employer records as the case may be, if those invalid nominations are observed. In the system interface, the employer has to specify and declare and certify that the nomination exists in the service record of the employee are being considered for claim settlement.
In case of Subscribers under UOS: Any changes in the nomination post death of the Subscriber using the deceased Subscribers’, login credentials shall be treated as invalid and the amount needs to be settled in favour of legal heirs
