The Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has introduced key reforms to simplify the claim settlement process for EPF members and employers. These reforms are aimed at introducing faster, simpler, and hassle-free claim settlements for members and employers. Overall, the move is expected to reduce the claim rejection rate, providing more convenience for the users.
In a post on X, Union Minister Mansukh Mandaviya announced that the EPFO has introduced two key reforms in its operational system. First, members will no longer be required to upload an image of the cheque leaf or an attested bank passbook while filing online claims. This decision is aimed at simplifying the documentation process, and is expected to benefit over 7.7 crore EPF members, the government said in an official press release.
Under the leadership of PM Shri @narendramodi ji, EPFO continues its reform journey!
Two major reforms have been introduced to make the claim settlement process simpler, faster, and hassle-free for crores of EPF members & employers:
✅ No need to upload image of cheque leaf/… pic.twitter.com/YScWOkw0gnEPFO Ends Cheque Upload Requirement
“EPFO has completely dispensed with the requirement of uploading an image of a cheque leaf or attested bank passbook while filing online claims,” the labour ministry said.
The implementation of this reform for pan-India users followed after the ministry undertook a successful pilot phase, relaxing the requirement for certain KYC-updated members. The pilot phase was launched at the end of May 2024 and has benefitted about 1.7 crore users.
Earlier, this process was contributing to larger claim rejection rates as poor-quality/ unreadable uploads would get rejected by the portal, requiring the users to re-attempt their claim submissions.
EPFO Drops Employer Nod For UAN Bank Link
The EPFO has also removed the requirement of needing approval from the employer, in case of bank account seeding with the Universal Account Number (UAN). According to the labour ministry, this move will immediately benefit nearly 15 lakh EPF members with pending approvals.
For a seamless Provident Fund withdrawal, members are required to seed their bank accounts with their UAN.
In FY 2024-25, about 1.3 crore members requested bank account seeding. These requests earlier required employer approval after verification with the bank, the ministry said.
It was noticed that about 36,000 requests were raised daily for this purpose, and banks would take about three days for the verification process. However, after verification, the employer approval process was taking about 13 days, leading to delays. Hence, the newly introduced reforms will increase the overall efficiency of the system.
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