Expense Account, Mint
Are loads back? The distribution industry was agog when news filtered out last week that the Bajpai committee set up by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) had recommended a 50 basis points (bps) charge on the National Pension System (NPS) point of sale. A quick backgrounder: The Bajpai committee was set up to find out why the low-cost NPS is not popular with the retirement corpus-targeting Indian. Less than 50,000 people have handed over about Rs 100 crore of funds to NPS in the two years it has been thrown open to the Indian public. In contrast, equity funds have gathered a net of Rs 470 crore of retail money in the past 12 months despite the absence of a load on the product.