Chennai: The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) will make its first round of investments in Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs) over the next two months. This would mark the pension regulator’s maiden entry into the AIF ecosystem, following investments in equities and debt.The NPS Bharat Fund of Funds (FoF) has been established under NPS Trust to enable calibrated participation of pension savings in AIFs.“The NPS Bharat FoF has been created. We will be giving money to various AIFs, and we will become what are called limited partners in the AIFs. The PFRDA board had approved the concept of investing in AIFs five years ago. However, it did not work purely because of operational reasons. We have corrected those operational difficulties. Out of the total equity portfolio, up to 1% can be earmarked for government funds and up to 5% can be allocated to non-government funds,” PFRDA chairman S Ramann told reporters here on Friday.Currently, assets under management (AUM) stood at ₹18.4 lakh crore, with a subscriber base of more than 90 lakh from the non-government sector. “The first round of investments in AIFs will happen in another 60 days,” he added.Noting that steps are being taken to onboard subscribers through UPI apps, he said the regulator was expecting a 22% growth in contributions. “We have an ambitious target of scaling up our non-government subscriber base to five crore in the current fiscal (FY27),” Ramann said.
