New Delhi: The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has made four major changes to the EPF account. EPFO introduced auto claim settlement for education, marriage, and housing. Now, all claims up to Rs 1 lakh for the mentioned purposes will be auto-processed without human interference. EPFO has also simplified the death claim process. Apart from this EPFO has relaxed the rules related to mandatory uploading of cheque leaf image. Let’s take a look at these changes:
EPFO Auto-mode settlement
EPFO has introduced auto-mode settlement. Claims related to 68K (education & marriage purpose) and 68B (housing purpose) will be settled without any human interference. The limit for these claims should not be more than Rs 1,00,000.
Rule 68J deals with receiving an advance for a medical condition. Under this, you can take a part of the money from an EPF account as an advance to treat illness. Now all claims up to Rs 1 lakh under this head will also be auto-processed.
Faster EPF claim settlement
To speed up the claim settlement process, EPFO has ordered to set up a link office for multi-location claim settlement. The set up of more offices will divide the burden of claim settlement across the country. EPFO wishes to speed up claims processing with this change.
Simplifying death settlements
At times, Aadhaar details of EPF members are inaccurate or incomplete and field officers used to face difficulties in processing death claims. To simplify this, EPFO has allowed the processing of physical claims without seeding Aadhaar. However, this will be done only after obtaining approval from the Officer in Charge via an e-office file. It is permissible only in a situation where the member details are correct in the UAN but inaccurate/incomplete in UID database.
Uploading of cheque leaf
Now EPF members won’t have to upload the image of a validated bank passbook or cheque leaf. In some cases, EPFO has relaxed the requirement of mandatory uploading of the image of the cheque leaf and attested bank passbook. According to a May 28, 2024 circular, the mandatory uploading of cheque leaf or attested bank passbook is exempted in specific cases such as:
Online verification of bank KYC through respective bank or NPCI
When the bank KYC is verified by the employer using digital signature certificate
When the Aadhaar number seeded with EPFO account is verified by UIDAI
4 changes in EPFO: All claims up to Rs 1 lakh related to education, marriage and housing will be auto-processed without human interference. Lets take a look the EPF changes. Personal Finance Business News – Personal Finance News, Share Market News, BSE/NSE News, Stock Exchange News Today
