EPFO tweaks rules, no need for employer nod to update details

The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), the state-backed retirement-savings manager, has rolled out major changes that will simplify key processes for its nearly 70 million subscribers by cutting down time-consuming approvals and human intervention, Union labour minister Mansukh Mandaviya said on Saturday.

Members will now be able to self-correct personal details, including name, addresses and bank details, by logging in to the EPFO website. Such changes by Aadhaar-verified account holders will no longer require the approval of the HR department of a firm, the minister said.

To rectify common errors in recording name, marital status and service details during the registration process or later, an employee had to make a request online with supporting documents. The request would have to be verified by the employer and then forwarded to EPFO for approval, a process called joint declaration.

“The EPFO has simplified this process on the EPFO portal by allowing an employee to self-correct most common errors in his personal details without verification by employer and approval by the EPFO if an employee has a valid universal account number (UAN) issued after October 1, 2017, when Aadhaar matching was made compulsory,” the minister said.

The earlier process put huge workload on employers and EPFO even if the employee had already authenticated his identity through the Aadhaar KYC process, prompting the labour ministry to initiate the reform, an official said, separately.

If the UAN was issued prior to Oct 1, 2017, corrections can be made by the employer without EPFO’s approval. The requirement of supporting document has also been simplified for such cases, Mandaviya said. Nearly 27% of grievances filed by the members relate to member profile/KYC issues which is expected to significantly reduce now, with the self-correction facility.

“The EPFO is in the process of implementing various reforms. Our goal is to bring EPFO services on a par with bank services,” the minister said.

EPFO savings are a vital source of social security for employees. An employer and worker both are required by law to contribute 12% of a person’s basic salary towards a corpus managed by the EPFO.

The savings interest rate offered by EPFO, at 8.25% for FY24, is a widely watched metric of the salaried middle-class.

In another key change, the EPFO has simplified the process of transfer of PF account if an employee changes job. Any online request for transfer of PF account in case of any change of job had to be verified by the employer before submitting to EPFO. This has been done away with, Mandaviya said.

Now, EPF members with fully KYC-compliant PF accounts can file their online transfer claims with Aadhaar-based OTP directly with EPFO without the need for any intervention by the employer.

Currently, such requests have a huge backlog due to multiple steps. During the last nine months, almost 2 million claims remained pending with employers for more than 15 days, data from the labour ministry showed.