UTI ties up with IIMPS for micro-pension scheme

UTI Asset Management Company and Invest India Micro Pension Services on Wednesday announced plans to take the UTI retirement benefit pension fund, a government notified pension scheme, to members covered under the Basix group's programme for the poor.

Micro-pensions can play a key role in bridging India's pension coverage gap, UTI AMC's chairman and managing director U K Sinha told the media in Mumbai. "The new initiative would help offer retirement solutions to the working poor who have been excluded by formal pension and provident fund schemes," he said.

Under the plans, UTI and IIMPS, which is jointly promoted by Sewa Bank, UTI AMC and some individuals, have entered into a strategic partnership with Basix group, a leading institution engaged in the welfare of the poor, to offer the pension product to the members of the group.

Basix is a livelihood promotion institution that works with over 1.5 million poor, 90 per cent of whom are rural households and the rest urban slum dwellers. Basix works with over 100 NGOs and community-based microfinance institutions (MFIs) across the country.

Under this partnership, IIMPS will use its proprietary micro-pension model to deliver the benefits. In the current year, the plan targets about 700,000 working poor living in 10,000 villages spread over 12 states.

Most of them are women living in villages of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Bihar, Orissa, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Delhi, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Assam.