The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) introduced some major changes for all members, mainly concerning the EPF claim process, to facilitate flexibility and convenience. According to a report in the Economic Times, these changes include the extension of auto-settlement, multi-location claim settlement and quicker death claims. To understand these recent changes, take a look at the EPF revisions in more detail.
EPF Changes 2024
1. The facility of auto-settlement: In a press release issued on May 13, 2024, EPFO introduced the facility of auto-settlement for housing under Rule 68B and education and marriage under Rule 68K. According to these, any claim of up to Rs 1,00,000 will be auto-processed without any human intervention.
2. Multi-location claim settlement: To fasten the EPF claim settlement process within the specified timeframes, EPFO introduced a link office setup for multi-location settlement. With this, delays will be minimised by dispersing the burden associated with expediting claim settlements across the country. Apart from that, the feature will speed up the claims processing and replace the current geographical jurisdiction structure and productivity.
3. EPF death claims without Aadhaar seeding: In a new move to ease the process of death claims in the absence of Aadhaar details, EPFO allowed physical claims without seeding Aadhaar. While this has been brought in as a temporary measure, proper approval is required from the OIC, who would record the details of verification to confirm the deceased’s membership and relationship with the claimants. However, the instructions would only apply in cases where the details of the deceased member are correct in the UAN but inaccurate in the Aadhaar database.
4. Relaxation on the mandatory upload of cheque leaf: In its circular dated May 28, 2024, the EPFO relaxed the mandatory rule of uploading the cheque leaf image or attested bank passbook for certain cases. While the step would facilitate online claim settlements more quickly, it would also lower the number of rejected claims due to failure to submit the images on time. The EPFO notice also mentions that the relaxation would be provided only for certain eligible cases based on validations like online verification of the Bank KYC by the concerned Bank/NPCI, Verification of the bank KYC by the employer using DSC, Seeded Aadhaar numbers verified by UIDAI, and others.