When doing a pull for a repo , when updating submodules the only options seen are as below .

git -c diff.mnemonicprefix=false -c core.quotepath=false submodule update --init --recursive

Update to include the "–remote" option as well 

git -c diff.mnemonicprefix=false -c core.quotepath=false submodule update --init --recursive --remote

This helps to pull latest from remote branch as described in the .gitmodules file.

As of today it always updates submodules based on the commit when the submodule was linked and not on latest of a branch we need.