Plan your retirement with Atal Pension Yojana

Atal Pension Yojna was introduced by the Government of India in the budget year 2015-2016 for the purpose of pension or regular income after achieving the age of retirement. Under this scheme, the investor starts receiving a regular pension after attaining the age of 60. The scheme is administered and monitored by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority.

In order to promote the scheme, the Government of India also contributed Rs. 1000/- or 50% of the subscriber’s contribution, whichever is lower for those who were not income taxpayers and were not covered under any statutory social security scheme. The contribution was made for a period of 5 years for all such individuals who joined the scheme between 1^st June 2015 and 31^st December 2015.

Who can invest in Atal Pension Yojana?

The following criteria need to be fulfilled to invest in Atal Pension Yojna Scheme:

1. The investor should be the citizen of India.
2. The age of the investor should be between 18 and 40 years.
3. The investor should have a valid Aadhar Card.
4. The applicant or investor should have a valid bank account.

Key Features

1. The investor gets a monthly pension after attaining the age of 60 years.
2. Under the scheme, the investor gets a regular monthly pension between Rs. 1000/- to Rs. 5,000/- depending upon the investment made by the investor.
3. The pension is granted for the lifetime of the investor.
4. The premium is decided upon the age of the investor at the time of joining the scheme and the monthly pension desired after retirement.
5. The investor needs to invest money for a period of a minimum of 20 years and a maximum of 42 years.
6. There are 5 pension slabs under which the investor can invest money. The premium is thus decided for each of the slabs depending upon the age of the investor at the time of availing the scheme. The pension slabs are Rs. 1000/- per month, Rs. 2000/- per month, Rs. 3000/- per month, Rs. 4000/- per month and Rs. 5000/- per month.
7. The premium amount is collected on a monthly basis.
8. The premium amount is auto-debited from the associated bank account of the investor.
9. In case of delay in payments, the Bank is collecting additional penalty amounts varying from a minimum of Rs. 1 per month to a maximum of Rs. 10/- per month depending upon the amount of premium to be collected. The amount thus collected as the penalty for delayed payments is specified as under

• For Contribution up to Rs. 100 per month, Rs. 1 is collected for each defaulted premium payment.
• For Contribution of Rs. 101 to 500/- per month, Rs. 2 is collected for each defaulted premium payment.
• For Contribution of Rs. 501 to 1000/- per month, Rs. 5 is collected for each defaulted premium payment.
• For Contribution of above Rs. 1001 per month, Rs. 10 is collected for each defaulted premium payment.

10. In case of regular defaults in payments of premium, the Atal Pension Yojna account is treated in the following manner:

• The account is frozen due to the non-payment of premium continuously for a period of 6 months.
• Upon 12 months of such default, the account will be deactivated.
• If the premium is not paid for 24 months continuously, an account is automatically closed.

11. The premium paid along with the interest shall be refunded to the account holder once the account is automatically closed due to non-payment of premium for 24 months.
12. Upon attaining the age of 60, a 100% pension would be granted to the subscriber or account holder. The subscriber needs to submit a request to the bank in order to draw the monthly guaranteed pension.
13. In case of the death of the account holder or subscriber, the pension is transferred to the spouse. However, in case of death of both, the corpus money or maturity amount is granted to the legal heir or nominee.
14. The Subscriber can exit the pension scheme before the age of 60 only under extreme adversity such as medical emergency with terminal disease or death of the beneficiary.