Seeking to explore methods to avert market risks and provide a steady income, Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) informed on Tuesday (January 13, 2026) that it has constituted an expert committee to develop a framework for assured payouts under the National Pension Scheme (NPS).

The 15-member committee would be chaired by M.S. Sahoo who has previously served as the Chairperson of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI). The committee would consist of members from the legal, actuarial, finance, insurance, capital markets and academic fraternity.

Other than being tasked with creating regulations for assured payouts, it would be required to deliberating on the operational design for execution in terms of defining lock-in periods, withdrawal limits, pricing mechanism and fee structures; provide for consumer protection by carving standardised procedures to prevent mis-selling and address subscribers’ expectations about the nature of assurance, among other things.

For context, in a consultation paper floated in September last year, the pension regulator had noted that from the subscribers’ perspective, as a “mark-to-market” defined contribution scheme, NPS, “leaves certain key questions unanswered, namely, adequacy of corpus and predictability of retirement income due to factors like market volatility, contribution persistency and investment choices.”