The National Pension System (NPS) is a low-cost retirement savings scheme in which people contribute regularly and invest across equity, corporate bonds and government securities. NPS subscribers must choose how their money is invested and may also need help when account-related issues crop up. Two new PFRDA tools address these needs. NPS PRIDE-DISHA helps compare historical returns across pension funds and investment choices, while Pension Sahayak helps users raise and track complaints. Here is how the tools work, what has improved and where some caution is needed.NPS performance is usually presented as the point-to-point return of individual equity, corporate bond or government securities schemes. Such a return effectively assumes that money was invested at the beginning and remained invested throughout. An NPS subscriber, however, normally contributes periodically and holds a combination of asset classes.PRIDE-DISHA uses daily historical Net Asset Values (NAVs) and the Extended Internal Rate of Return, or XIRR. XIRR is a money-weighted annualised return. It accounts for the amount and date of every contribution. The result, therefore, comes closer to showing how regular monthly contributions would have accumulated under different pension fund managers, or PFMs, and investment choices. PFRDA says the tool uses nearly 5,000 days of NAV history and supports Active Choice, Auto Choice and composite schemes.How to use it? Open the PRIDE-DISHA calculator. Then, enter your date of birth, contribution start date and monthly contribution. Select an investment option. Under Active Choice, enter the allocation to equity, corporate bonds and government securities. The total must equal 100 per cent, while equity can be up to 75 per cent.You can add a second scheme for comparison and select Calculate & Compare. The results show the accumulated corpus and XIRR across eligible PFMs through bar charts. Users can review three, five or seven years, till date, or select a custom period. A three-year result means the first three years from the contribution start date, not necessarily the latest trailing three-year return.If you want to use DISHA better, try more than one starting date and review period. A PFM leading over five years may not lead over seven years or till date. Look for reasonable consistency rather than selecting the tallest bar in one chart.Do remember that the displayed corpus is a historical simulation at the end of the review period, not a forecast of retirement wealth. Past XIRR cannot predict future returns. The calculator also excludes certain NPS charges and does not directly show volatility, drawdowns or portfolio risk.Only currently registered PFMs, whose selected schemes were operating from the chosen start date, are shown. For instance, newer PFMs like Axis, Tata, and DSP launched after 2022 will not appear in five-year or seven-year queries simply because they lack the required NAV history. Therefore, the absence of a fund does not necessarily indicate poor performance, and subscribers should not switch PFMs based on one calculation. PFRDA expressly states that DISHA does not provide future projections.Pension SahayakPFRDA’s Pension Sahayak is an AI-enabled platform for raising and tracking complaints related to the National Pension System, Unified Pension Scheme and Atal Pension Yojana. It replaces PFRDA’s earlier Central Grievance Management System, or CGMS.Under the previous system, subscribers had to remember their PRAN credentials, use separate logins for different PRANs and identify the correct complaint category and intermediary. Tracking a complaint and taking it to the next level were also less convenient.Pension Sahayak can be used when, for instance, a contribution is not reflected, an account correction remains pending or a withdrawal request is not acted upon. Earlier, the subscriber might first have had to determine whether the Central Recordkeeping Agency, Point of Presence, nodal office, pension fund manager or another intermediary was responsible. The new portal allows the subscriber to state the problem, while the system classifies it and sends it to the relevant entity.On the live portal, subscribers can verify themselves using their mobile number or PRAN, along with their date of birth. An OTP is then sent to the registered mobile number. Multiple PRANs linked to the same mobile number can be accessed through a common login.Subscribers can describe the problem briefly or select a grievance category. Once the complaint is submitted, the portal generates a grievance ID and shows whether it is under review, escalated, resolved or under appeal.The portal also displays the entity handling the complaint and the applicable resolution timeline. Subscribers can rate the response, escalate an unsatisfactory complaint to NPS Trust and appeal to the PFRDA Ombudsman online. Complaints that remain unresolved beyond the prescribed period are automatically escalated.The practical improvement is that the subscriber gets a visible record of the entire process. The portal shows where the complaint is pending, who is responsible for resolving it and whether it has moved to the next level. This is more useful than receiving only an acknowledgement without knowing what is happening thereafter.The concerned intermediary has 30 days to resolve a complaint. If the subscriber is dissatisfied, or the complaint remains unresolved, it can be escalated to NPS Trust, which has 21 days to respond. If NPS Trust’s response is delayed or unsatisfactory, the subscriber can appeal to the PFRDA Ombudsman (ombudsman@pfrda.org.in).PFRDA has announced text- and voice-based access in 22 Indian languages through Bhashini, although the live portal currently marks this facility as “Coming Soon”. Filing a grievance is free.To use Pension Sahayak effectively, raise one issue at a time, state what happened and when, mention the transaction or request date, explain the resolution sought, attach relevant documents and retain the grievance ID. Avoid broad statements such as “there is a problem with my NPS account”; specify the contribution, correction, withdrawal or service request that remains unresolved.For assistance, NPS Trust’s toll-free helpdesk is 1800-570-6778, while its WhatsApp query number is +91-8588852130. Its Chief Grievance Redressal Officer can be contacted at cgro@npstrust.org.in. Subscribers can contact the PFRDA Ombudsman at ombudsman@pfrda.org.in. PFRDA’s contact number is 011-40717900.Published on July 25, 2026