The Employees Provident Fund Organisation, the pension fund agency that has a corpus of around Rs3,50,000 crore, proposes to engage more fund managers to manage its fund.

FPFO hopes to appoint multiple fund managers by 31 August. The present sole fund manager, the State Bank of India (SBI), will continue to manage the funds till then.

The Central Board of Trustees (CBT), the apex decision-making body of the EPFO, wanted multiple AMCs for the fund to be in place by 30 June, so as to take over management of the fund for a three-year term beginning 1 July.

"It is proposed that the time line for selection of fund managers be extended by another two months to 31 August 2011 or till the selection whichever is earlier," according to an EPFO proposal listed in the agenda of the CBT meeting scheduled on June 24.

"It is also proposed that till the appointment of new fund managers, State Bank of India (SBI) may be allowed to continue as the fund manager of EPFO corpus," it said.

This is the second extension of time the EPFO is seeking after it missed the 31 March deadline when four fund managers, including ICICI Pru, HSBC AMC, Reliance Capital and SBI, were planned to take over as fund managers for a three-year term beginning 1 April 2011.