29 July : A special meeting of the Central Board of Trustees, Employees Provident Fund was held here today to decide on the issue of appointing a multiple fund managers to manage the provident fund monies.
The issue of multiple fund managers is under examination by the Board for more than two years. In an earlier meeting, it was decided to appoint a professional agency to assist the EPFO through the process of appointing multiple fund managers. M/s. CRICIL was appointed as a consultant. After following rigorous scrutiny mechanism in a transparent and fair manner, the Committee of Officers short listed 17 out of 21 applicants for inviting request for proposals (RFP). All the parties were informed of the requirements and technical parameters. On examination of technical bid, 10 fund managers were shortlisted for financial bid.
On opening the financial bid, two fund managers among the shortlisted i.e. namely HDFC AMC, Birla Sun Life AMC., made a bid of 0%. Their bids were rejected after taking a legal advice and that zero bid would not constitute a valid contract. The Board selected four fund managers on the basis of financial bid. The fund managers selected and fee quoted by them are as follows:
1. HSBC AMC 0.0063%
2. ICICIC Prudential AMC 0.0075%
3. State Bank of India 0.01%
4. Reliance Capital AMC 0.01%
It is expected that each year about Rs.30,000 crore would be available as incremental accretion to these fund managers. The monies be managed by them would be in a certain proportion that would be decided later. Further they would also render custodial services for maintaining the previous investment currently held by SBI.