PORTABILITY OF PENSION ACCOUNTS
Subject: Shifting your
pension account from the present Bank to the Bank of your choice: The Steps
For information of those who may be contemplating changing their
Pension Accounts, given below is the sequence, given by a veteran who has just
finished the procedure and has now fully understood through hindsight, after
personally witnessing what happened at each stage.
(a) The pensioner writes a simple
one-page letter to his own branch, stating:
Dear Sir,
Sub: Pension Account No. xxxxxxxxxxx
I wish to start receiving my pension at
XYZ Bank, (give new bank’s name and address) with immediate effect.
I have opened a joint SB Account No. xxx
with my spouse at that branch for this purpose. Please transfer my pension to
my new bank.”
Notes:
1 No copies need to be sent to anyone
else nor any enclosures are required with the above letter. I had enclosed
copies of my PPOs and endorsed copies of the entire package to PCDA (P), HDFC
Bank and
Central Pension Processing Centre of
SBI. This was later proved to be a waste because none of these agencies took
any action on the letter or the copies. Nor was any action needed on their part
at that stage.
2 Your bank most probably will not know
what to do with your letter. You have to tell them that they need to convey
your request to the Central Pension Processing Centre (CPPC) of your bank, and
forward your application to them.
3 It may be noted that the pension
disbursing branches do not have any documents such as PPOs, joint photos etc.
with them. These are all now retained at the CPPCs of each bank.
(b) The CPPC will forward your request
back to your bank along with all the PPOs and connected documents, which they
initially received from PCDA(P) at the time of first grant of pension when you
retired from service.
(c) Your Bank will now send the entire
bundle to your new bank with a request to take necessary action to credit the
pension to the pensioner’s account. Please ensure that your old bank sends the
Last Pension Certificate along with these documents.
(d) On receipt of documents, your new
bank will send the same to their CPPC.
(e) Your new bank’s CPPC will examine
the papers and may ask for additional undertakings, indemnities etc, as per
their protocol. In my case HDFC Bank’s CPPC (not the branch) knew exactly what
they
wanted.
(f) Your bank’s CPPC will process the
papers (mainly to coordinate book transactions and heads of expenditure between
treasury and the bank) and then credit your pension directly to your new bank
account along with arrears accrued after the last pension was paid to you by
the old bank. This takes about 2-3 weeks.
(g) Though not written anywhere, it is
highly advisable to intimate PCDA(P) regarding change of your bankers so that
all future PPOs, corrigenda, increments, revisions and DA intimations etc are
sent by
them to your new pension bankers.
(h) This is also a good opportunity to
send the Lifetime Arrears Certificate to your new bankers, CDA(P), AG’S Br etc.
(i) Please ensure that the account
opened at the new bank is a joint account and has a nominee recorded on it.
(j) Please also complete the formalities
of internet banking operation for the new account, and get it linked to other accounts,
if any, at the new branch.
