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Thirty Officer Grade ‘A’ (Assistant Manager) posts with gross emoluments of approximately ₹2.05 lakh per month. The syllabus has changed materially this cycle: Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Media, and Marketing & Communication are all new additions to General Stream Paper 2 — in both Phase I and Phase II.
PFRDA Officer Grade ‘A’ (Assistant Manager) 2026, Advt. No. 03/2026 dated 3 September 2026, is a direct recruitment by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority — a financial sector regulator established under the PFRDA Act, 2013 — for 30 posts across four streams: General (25), Research (2), Actuary (2) and Official Language / Rajbhasha (1). The pay scale runs ₹62,500 to ₹1,26,100 over 17 years, with gross emoluments at the minimum of scale of approximately ₹2,05,000 per month. Online applications are open 3 to 24 September 2026. Selection is a three-phase process — Phase I screening on 15 October 2026, Phase II on 20 November 2026, and a Phase III interview — with the final merit built from Phase II at 85% and the interview at 15%. The most significant change this cycle is the syllabus itself: General Stream Paper 2 has gained three new sections — Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning, Media, and Marketing & Communication, taking it from seven subject heads to twelve.
AI/ML, Media, and Marketing & Communication were not in the earlier General Stream paper. Every candidate is starting these from zero, whatever their years of banking preparation.
The General Stream accepts a Master's or two-year PG Diploma in any discipline, or an LLB, or a B.E./B.Tech, or CA, CS, CMA or CFA. That makes the AI/ML section the real differentiator, not the degree.
Marks in Phase I are used purely to shortlist for Phase II and count for nothing in the final list. Everything rides on Phase II and the interview.
The General Stream Paper 2 subject list has expanded from seven heads to twelve. Three entirely new sections have been added, and they apply to Paper 2 in both Phase I and Phase II — so the change affects your screening paper and the paper carrying 85% of your final selection alike.
Fourteen named topics, from supervised learning and cross-validation through to LLMs, Agentic AI and Responsible AI. The deepest of the three additions, and the one furthest from a commerce background.
Micro-targeting, consumer behaviour, media convergence, virtual and augmented reality, the digital divide, audience reception, cultural representation, entertainment digital platforms, social media algorithms, market trends, best global practices and negotiation skills.
A marketing half — management, research, planning, product, pricing, distribution, promotion, branding, digital marketing and financial literacy — plus a communication half covering listening, body language, conflict resolution, public speaking and emotional intelligence.
Why this matters more than a normal syllabus tweak: the three new sections sit alongside nine established ones in a paper of only 50 questions. Existing coaching material, previous years' question banks and every candidate's accumulated preparation cover the old seven heads and nothing else. For one cycle at least, the new sections are the part of the paper where preparation actually separates candidates — and AI/ML is the largest and least familiar of the three.
Fourteen topics, listed by name in the official annexure. They apply to Paper 2 in both Phase I and Phase II, which means this module is tested twice — once to get you shortlisted and again in the paper that carries 85% of your final selection. It is conceptual, not coding-based, so a non-technical candidate can absolutely master it.
The foundational framing — what it means for a system to learn from data rather than follow explicit rules, and where that fits in the wider field of AI.
Learning from labelled examples. Classification and regression, and the kinds of financial-sector problems each maps onto.
Finding structure without labels — clustering and dimensionality reduction, and how they differ in purpose from supervised methods.
Cleaning, handling missing values, encoding and scaling. Frequently examined because it is where most real modelling effort actually goes.
How model quality is judged — accuracy and its limits, and why a single metric can mislead on imbalanced data.
What a model is as an object: training, parameters, inference, and the lifecycle from data to deployed prediction.
Natural Language Processing — how text is turned into something a model can work with, and the standard tasks in the field.
A named NLP application, and one with obvious relevance to a regulator watching market and subscriber sentiment.
The bias-variance trade-off in plain terms — a model that memorises versus one that never learned. A reliable MCQ favourite.
Why a single train-test split is not enough, and how k-fold validation gives a more honest estimate of performance.
Learning through interaction and reward rather than from a fixed dataset — agents, environments, states and policies.
Large Language Models — what they are, how they are trained, and their known limitations including hallucination. Rarely seen in a government syllabus before this cycle.
AI systems that plan and act across multiple steps with tools, rather than answering a single prompt. Its appearance in a recruitment syllabus is a genuine first for Indian financial regulators.
Fairness, bias, transparency, explainability and accountability — the governance side, which sits naturally alongside a regulator's actual mandate.
PFRDA is not an outlier — the AI and Machine Learning block has been appearing across financial-sector recruitment syllabi. Our course teaches these fourteen topics at the conceptual depth an MCQ paper tests, without assuming any coding background.
Thirty posts in total, heavily concentrated in the General Stream. PwBD reservation is horizontal and sits within the overall vacancies.
| Stream | SC | ST | OBC | EWS | UR/GEN | PwBD | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| General | 4 | 2 | 7 | 3 | 9 | 2 | 25 |
| Research | 1 | — | — | — | 1 | — | 2 |
| Actuary | — | — | — | — | 2 | — | 2 |
| Official Language (Rajbhasha) | — | — | 1 | — | — | — | 1 |
| Total | 5 | 2 | 8 | 3 | 12 | 2 | 30 |
The two PwBD posts in the General Stream are identified as one for Blindness and Low Vision and one for Deaf and Hard of Hearing. PwBD candidates may belong to any category, are eligible for age relaxation, and receive fee concession. Where no suitable benchmark-disability candidate is available, the vacancy is filled per the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 and central directives.
Age and educational qualification are both reckoned as on 31 July 2026, independently of the application window. PFRDA reserves the right to change the schedule or terminate the process without notice.
Call letters are not posted on a fixed date. Availability is intimated by email and SMS, with general information hosted on the PFRDA website — so keep the registered email and mobile active for the whole process and check the site regularly.
Educational qualification is judged as on 31 July 2026. Candidates who have appeared for final qualifying examinations and are awaiting results may still sit all three phases, but the joining offer depends on producing the documents within the time granted.
| Stream | Qualification accepted |
|---|---|
| General | Master's Degree or Post Graduate Diploma of minimum two years' duration in any discipline; or Bachelor's Degree in Law; or Bachelor's Degree in Engineering; or ACA/FCA from ICAI; or ACS/FCS from ICSI; or ACMA/FCMA from ICMAI; or CFA from the CFA Institute. |
| Research | Master's or two-year PG Diploma in Economics, Commerce, Business Administration, Econometrics, Quantitative Economics, Financial Economics, Mathematical Economics, Business Economics, Agricultural Economics, Industrial Economics or Business Analytics; or in Finance, Quantitative Finance, Mathematical Finance, Quantitative Techniques, International Finance, Business Finance, International and Trade Finance, Project and Infrastructure Finance or Agri Business Finance; or in Statistics, Mathematical Statistics, Statistics & Informatics, Applied Statistics & Informatics, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning or Big Data Analytics; or a Master's in Mathematics with a one-year PG diploma in Statistics or related subjects. |
| Actuary | Graduation from a recognised University or Institute and a pass or exemption in all seven Core Principles subjects of the Institute of Actuaries of India (IAI) examination. |
| Official Language (Rajbhasha) | Master's Degree in Hindi or Hindi Translation with English as a subject at Bachelor's level; or Master's in Sanskrit, English, Economics or Commerce with Hindi as a subject at Bachelor's level; or Master's in both English and Hindi / Hindi Translation. |
Not more than 30 years as on 31 July 2026 — that is, born on or after 1 August 1996.
₹1,000 inclusive of GST for UR/GEN, EWS and OBC. Nil for SC, ST, PwBD and Ex-servicemen. Non-refundable, and payable separately for each stream you apply to.
| Category | Relaxation | Condition |
|---|---|---|
| SC / ST | 5 years | Where posts are reserved for them |
| OBC | 3 years | Non-Creamy Layer only, where posts are reserved |
| PwBD (UR / EWS) | 10 years | Applicable whether or not the post is reserved |
| PwBD (OBC) | 13 years | Where vacancies are reserved for OBC |
| PwBD (SC / ST) | 15 years | Where vacancies are reserved for SC/ST |
| Ex-servicemen | 5 years | Subject to the service conditions in the advertisement |
Cumulative relaxation is allowed. SC, ST and OBC candidates who are also covered as Persons with Benchmark Disabilities or Ex-servicemen are eligible for cumulative age relaxation. Candidates from these categories may apply even where no vacancy is reserved for them — but then get no relaxation, though SC/ST/PwBD/Ex-servicemen remain fee-exempt. OBC (NCL) and EWS certificates must be issued on or after 1 April 2026.
Every objective paper carries negative marking of one-fourth of the marks assigned to the question. All papers except the English test are set bilingually in Hindi and English.
| Paper | Subject | Questions | Marks | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paper 1 All streams | English Language | 20 | 25 | 60 minutes |
| Quantitative Aptitude | 20 | 25 | ||
| Test of Reasoning | 30 | 25 | ||
| General Awareness, including financial sector questions | 20 | 25 | ||
| Paper 2 | Stream subject — General Stream covers Commerce, Accountancy, Management, Finance, Costing, Companies Act, Economics and Pension Sector, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Media, Marketing & Communication. Research, Actuary and Rajbhasha streams sit their specialised subject. | 50 | 100 | 40 minutes |
| Paper | Subject | Questions | Marks | Duration | Weightage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paper 1 | English, descriptive test of drafting skills — precis writing, essay writing and comprehension | 3 | 100 | 60 minutes | 1/3 |
| Paper 2 | Stream subject, multiple choice — same syllabus as Phase I Paper 2 | 50 | 100 | 40 minutes | 2/3 |
They shortlist you for Phase II and count for nothing else. Cut-offs apply separately in each paper and in aggregate, with the aggregate decided by the Authority relative to vacancies.
In Phase II, your descriptive English paper is evaluated only if you clear the minimum qualifying marks in Paper 2. Write a brilliant essay on a weak subject paper and it is never read.
Candidates equalling 5× the number of vacancies are shortlisted in order of merit for the interview. Final selection is Phase II at 85% plus interview at 15%.
Why the AI/ML section is worth disproportionate effort: it sits inside Paper 2, which is the paper that both gates your English evaluation and carries two-thirds of Phase II — and Phase II is 85% of your final selection. A handful of marks from a section most candidates skip moves you further than the same marks anywhere else. Our AI & ML course covers precisely these fourteen topics.
The Paper 2 syllabus is common to both Phase I and Phase II for every stream, so one round of preparation serves both examinations. Below is the complete published syllabus, stream by stream.
90 questions, 100 marks, 60 minutes. Sat by every candidate regardless of stream, in Phase I only.
Objective questions on comprehension, grammar and usage.
Standard numerical ability and data interpretation.
The largest section by question count but worth the same 25 marks, so each question carries less than one mark — pace accordingly.
Including questions specifically related to the financial sector.
Applies to 25 of the 30 posts. This same syllabus is examined twice: as Paper 2 in Phase I and again as Paper 2 in Phase II.
The founding statute of the Authority itself, and every amendment made to it. Expect direct, factual questions — this is the one section where the examiner is testing knowledge of their own governing law.
Concepts, approach and broad trends of the Union Budget, together with the Economic Survey.
The Companies Act, 2013, with specific reference to Chapter III, Chapter IV, Chapter VIII, Chapter X, Chapter XI, Chapter XII and Chapter XXVII — a defined, closeable scope rather than the whole Act.
See the topic-by-topic breakdown of what each of these means →
Twelve sections, one paper of fifty questions. That averages roughly four questions per section, which means the three new heads — AI/ML, Media, and Marketing & Communication — together account for around a quarter of the paper, on ground no candidate has covered before. Sections A and I are the other two you will not find in generic banking material: the PFRDA Act and the pension sector are specific to this recruiter, so read them from the Authority's own publications.
For the 2 Research posts. A compact but demanding statistics list.
Probability Theory · Descriptive Statistics · Probability Distributions · Statistical Inference · Sampling Techniques · Testing of Hypothesis · Economic Statistics · Time Series Analysis · Operations Research · Statistical Quality Control · Statistical Computing.
For the 2 Actuary posts, common to both phases.
History of Indian insurance and principles of insurance; risk and uncertainty, pooling and diversification of risk, indemnity and insurable interest; legal foundations of insurance, basics of group and health insurance and pensions, intermediation and its role in mobilising savings, evolution of types and bancassurance in India; functions performed by insurers — product design, pricing, distribution, underwriting, claims, investment and reinsurance, group insurance and superannuation funds; insurance lines and products — life insurance, annuities and health insurance, liability risks and insurance, valuation and solvency requirements, specialist insurance lines in India, reinsurance, GIC of India, obligatory cessions and retention of risk within the country.
Nature and scope of management; management processes and the role of a manager; leadership tasks, styles and theories; Human Resource Development, career planning, training and development; performance appraisal, potential appraisal and development, feedback and performance counselling, rewards and employee welfare; motivation, morale and incentives; communication process, channels and barriers; role of information technology; corporate governance — factors affecting it and its mechanisms.
For the 1 Official Language post, common to both phases.
Questions on the Official Language Policy of the Government of India; Hindi to English translation of terms, phrases and sentences; English to Hindi translation of terms, phrases and sentences; Hindi to English legal terminology; English to Hindi legal terminology; Hindi to English terminology in pension, administrative, banking, capital market, economics and social security domains; and the same terminology from English to Hindi.
100 marks, 3 questions, 60 minutes, one-third weightage in Phase II.
The paper is framed to assess writing skills including expression and understanding of the topic, through precis writing, essay writing and comprehension. Remember that it is evaluated only if you clear the minimum qualifying marks in Paper 2.
The scale runs over 17 years with an efficiency bar, and the gross figure at entry is what makes this among the better-paid regulator entry roles.
₹62,500 – 3600(4) – 76,900 – 4050(7) – 1,05,250 – EB – 4050(4) – 1,21,450 – 4650(1) – 1,26,100
Seventeen years, with an efficiency bar after the ₹1,05,250 stage.
Approximately ₹2,05,000 per month, including PFRDA's contribution to the National Pension System, Grade Allowance, Special Allowance, Special Grade Allowance, Dearness Allowance, Local Allowance, Family Allowance, Special Compensatory Allowance, Learning Allowance and Housing Allowance.
Leave Fare Concession, medical expenses for hospitalisation and non-hospitalisation, personal accident insurance, eye refraction and cost of spectacles, children education allowance, knowledge updation allowance, briefcase, conveyance expenses, house cleaning allowance, staff furnishing scheme, scheme for purchasing computers and a Pluxee meal card.
Probation is two years, with confirmation subject to satisfactory performance and verification of character and antecedents. PFRDA has offices in New Delhi and Mumbai; selected officers may be posted at either and are liable to serve anywhere in India as the Authority requires.
Applications are accepted online only, at www.pfrda.org.in, from 3 to 24 September 2026. There is no need to send a printout to PFRDA's office.
Photograph, signature, left thumb impression and a handwritten declaration. The declaration must be in your own handwriting and in English only — written by anyone else or in another language and the application is invalid. Not in capital letters.
New registration generates a Provisional Registration Number and password, also sent by email and SMS. If those intimations never arrive, treat the application as not successfully registered.
No change is possible afterwards — not to name, category, date of birth, address, mobile, email or exam centre. Your name and your father's or husband's name must be spelt exactly as on your certificates.
Debit card, credit card, internet banking, IMPS, cash cards or mobile wallets. Non-generation of the e-receipt indicates payment failure — log in again and repeat rather than assuming it went through.
| Item | Dimensions | File size | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Photograph | 200 × 230 px | 20–50 KB | Recent passport size (4.5 × 3.5 cm), colour, light preferably white background. No caps, hats or dark glasses; religious headwear allowed if it does not cover the face. A live photo capture via webcam or mobile QR scan is also required. |
| Signature | 140 × 60 px | 10–20 KB | Signed on white paper with a black ink pen. Not in capital letters. A mismatch with the attendance sheet at the exam means disqualification. |
| Left thumb impression | — | 10–20 KB | On white paper in black or blue ink. Right thumb permitted if the candidate has no left thumb. |
| Handwriting declaration | — | 20–50 KB | The prescribed declaration text, in English, in the candidate's own handwriting, in black ink on white paper. |
PFRDA arranges free online pre-examination training for SC, ST, PwBD and OBC (NCL) candidates. Apply separately by email to recruitment.hr@pfrda.org.in in the prescribed format with a scanned caste, income and asset, or disability certificate, on or before the last date for the online application.
Thumb impression and photograph, or photograph and IRIS, are captured on the day of the Phase II examination and matched against your uploaded photo — so do not change your appearance from it. Contact lenses must be removed for IRIS capture; spectacles are preferred. Refusal to participate can lead to cancellation.
Exam centres: Phase I runs across five zones covering cities including Kolkata, Patna, Guwahati, Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Delhi/NCR, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Bhopal and Nagpur. Phase II uses a shorter list. You may give up to three centre preferences for Phase I and one for Phase II, and candidates applying for two streams must opt for the same centres in both phases.
Three sections have been added to General Stream Paper 2, taking it from seven subject heads to twelve: Artificial Intelligence (AI) / Machine Learning (ML), Media, and Marketing & Communication. The earlier paper covered only Commerce & Accountancy, Management, Finance, Costing, Companies Act, Economics and the Pension Sector. All three additions apply to Paper 2 in both Phase I and Phase II.
Yes. Section J of the General Stream Paper 2 syllabus is Artificial Intelligence (AI) / Machine Learning (ML), and it applies to both Phase I and Phase II. The listed topics are Machine Learning, Supervised Learning, Unsupervised Learning, Data Preprocessing, Model Evaluation, Introduction to ML Model, NLP, Sentiment Analysis, Overfitting and Underfitting, LLM, Agentic AI, Responsible AI, Cross-Validation and Reinforcement Learning.
Yes — Large Language Models, Agentic AI and Responsible AI are named explicitly in the official annexure. This is among the first Indian financial-regulator recruitment syllabi to test these topics by name, and candidates from non-technical backgrounds should not assume the section can be skipped.
The section is conceptual, not coding-based, so it is learnable without a programming background. Build it in sequence: what a model is, how supervised and unsupervised learning differ, why preprocessing matters, how evaluation and cross-validation work, and what overfitting means — then NLP, sentiment analysis and reinforcement learning, and finally LLMs, Agentic AI and Responsible AI. The AI, ML & Data Science course for bank and IT Officer exams follows exactly that order and covers all fourteen topics.
30 posts — 25 General, 2 Research, 2 Actuary and 1 Official Language (Rajbhasha). By category: 12 UR/GEN, 8 OBC, 5 SC, 3 EWS, 2 ST, with 2 posts identified for PwBD candidates on a horizontal basis.
Three phases. Phase I on 15 October 2026 has Paper 1 (English, Quantitative Aptitude, Reasoning, General Awareness — 90 questions, 100 marks, 60 minutes) and Paper 2 (stream subject — 50 questions, 100 marks, 40 minutes). Phase II on 20 November 2026 has Paper 1 as a descriptive English test of 100 marks with one-third weightage and Paper 2 as the stream subject with two-thirds weightage. Phase III is the interview. Negative marking is one-fourth in every objective paper.
No. Phase I marks are used only to shortlist candidates for Phase II. Final selection is Phase II at 85% weightage plus the Phase III interview at 15%.
The scale is ₹62,500-3600(4)-76,900-4050(7)-1,05,250-EB-4050(4)-1,21,450-4650(1)-1,26,100 over 17 years. Gross emoluments at the minimum of scale, including PFRDA's NPS contribution and allowances, come to approximately ₹2,05,000 per month.
Maximum 30 years as on 31 July 2026, meaning born on or after 1 August 1996. Relaxation: SC/ST 5 years, OBC 3 years, PwBD (UR/EWS) 10 years, PwBD (OBC) 13 years, PwBD (SC/ST) 15 years, and Ex-servicemen 5 years. Cumulative relaxation applies where a candidate falls in more than one of these groups.
₹1,000 inclusive of GST for UR/GEN, EWS and OBC candidates; nil for SC, ST, PwBD and Ex-servicemen. Non-refundable, and charged separately for each stream you apply to.
Yes, for a maximum of two streams you are eligible for, with a separate application and separate fee for each. Applying more than once in a single stream, or for more than two streams, means only the last application stands and the rest are summarily rejected with no refund.
A Master's or two-year PG Diploma in any discipline, or a Bachelor's in Law, or a Bachelor's in Engineering, or ACA/FCA from ICAI, ACS/FCS from ICSI, ACMA/FCMA from ICMAI, or CFA from the CFA Institute — all reckoned as on 31 July 2026.
Yes. The Research Stream explicitly accepts a Master's or two-year PG Diploma in Statistics, Mathematical Statistics, Statistics & Informatics, Applied Statistics & Informatics, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning or Big Data Analytics, alongside a long list of economics, finance and commerce qualifications.
Candidates who have appeared for their final qualifying examination and are awaiting results are eligible to appear in all three phases. The joining offer, however, is conditional on producing documents evidencing the qualification within the time granted — no extension is permitted and the offer stands withdrawn without notice.
Five times the number of vacancies, in order of merit. Candidates must clear separate cut-offs in each paper and an aggregate cut-off in Phase II, and Phase II Paper 1 is evaluated only for those who obtain the minimum qualifying marks in Paper 2.
Yes. Candidates may opt for the Phase III interview in either Hindi or English. All question papers in both phases, except the English test, are set bilingually in Hindi and English.
Yes, for SC, ST, PwBD and OBC (NCL) candidates, conducted online and free of cost. Apply separately by email to recruitment.hr@pfrda.org.in in the prescribed format with a scanned certificate, on or before the last date for the online application form.
Commerce, Economics, Costing and the Companies Act are ground every serious aspirant has already covered — the marks there are contested. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning is new, unfamiliar to a largely commerce-background applicant pool, and sits in the paper carrying two-thirds of Phase II. Fourteen named topics is a finite, closeable syllabus.
Taught for MCQ recall and understanding, with no programming assumed — built for commerce, law and management graduates.
Including the newer ones most material still ignores — LLMs, Agentic AI and Responsible AI.
The same AI/ML block now appears across SEBI, SBI SO and IBPS SO papers, so the preparation carries forward.