New Delhi, Aug. 27 -- New voluntary enrolments in the National Pension System (NPS), the government-backed market-linked retirement plan, have been declining-falling to 8.03 lakh in 2023-24 from 8.63 lakh in 2022-23, and 8.72 lakh in 2021-22.

Experts attribute the cooling interest to the growing appeal of the new tax regime, which offers no benefits on NPS contributions, and to weak distributor incentives that have kept retirement advisory from gaining traction.

There are only 63 retirement advisers (RAs), according to the latest numbers available with the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA), which introduced the licence in 2016.

And those also had close to no clients.

Aarathi Rajgopal took the RA licence with hi...