Reliance Cap top fund manager of EPFO in April-Dec 2009

ADAG-promoted Reliance Capital was ranked the topmost retirement fund manager overall by the EPFO for providing good returns and investing money in quality assets, while the state-owned SBI finished at the bottom. HSBC AMC and ICICI Pru AMC, which are the two other retirement fund managers, have been ranked second and third respectively for their performance during the nine-month period ending December 2009, as per the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) analysis, said a Labour Ministry source. The analysis placed before EPFO's key advisory body, Finance and Investment Committee, last week, pointed out that HSBC AMC churned out the highest yield (return) of 8.43 per cent followed closely by Reliance Capital at 8.41 per cent. Interestingly the country's largest public sector bank SBI has been placed at the lowest position on all parameters including yield, maturity profile and asset quality profile. On the basis of maturity profile, Reliance Capital AMC continues to perform the best on the said parameter followed by ICICI Pru AMC, HSBC AMC and SBI in that order. On asset quality profile, ICICI Pru AMC is ahead followed by Reliance Capital, HSBC AMC and SBI. However, among all fund managers appointed in July, 2008, ICICI Pru has been ranked first on overall basis for managing fund since September 17, 2008 till December 31, 2009 followed by HSBC AMC, Reliance Capital and SBI. A major chunk of EPFO's funds are invested in government schemes and securities having poor yields- less than 8 per cent. Hence, the government brought in four fund managers to churn out better returns. The EPFO manages PF deposits of over 4.71 crore subscribers with a corpus of around 2.57 lakh crore. Its incremental deposits every year is close to Rs 25,000 crore. EPFO is maintaining interest rate of 8.5 per cent for depositors since 2005-06 because of low return of government securities, schemes and instruments. Before that it was 9.5 per cent for the three consecutive fiscals from 2002-03. It gave 11 per cent and 11.25 per cent interest on PF deposits in 2000-01 and 2001-02, respectively. It maintained an interest rate as high as 12 per cent for 10 years between 1989-90 and 1999-2000.