Competition for managing India’s 1.61 trillion central government pension pool is expected to rise, after the pension regulator Monday allowed subscribers to switch their corpus to any pension fund manager (PFM) of their choice. Last year, the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) allowed employees to change pension fund managers as well as plans for fresh contributions from 1 April 2019. India has eight pension fund managers, who manage three plans—conservative life cycle fund with equity capped at 25%, moderate life cycle fund with equity capped at 50%, or 100% allocation to government bonds. Monday’s circular builds on last year’s changes and, coupled with an expected hike in fee cap for pension fund managers in December, may attract new entities to a low-margin segment of India’s financial services market. “Less than 1,000 existing central government subscribers have exercised this choice to switch. This has allayed concerns among the regulatory officials t...