The Employees Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) has taken an important decision to ‘facilitate life’ of its 7.5 crore members. The EPFO has decided to increase the limit of automatic disposal (ASAC) from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 5 lakh.
According to sources, Last week, Sumita Davra, Secretary, Ministry of Labor and Employment, approved the proposal at the 113rd Executive Committee (EC) meeting of the Central Board of Trustee (CBT) last week. The meeting was held on March 28 in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, in which Central Provident Fund Commissioner Ramesh Krishnamurthy was also present. Now this recommendation will be sent to CBT for approval.
After the approval of CBT, EPFO members will be able to withdraw up to Rs 5 lakh through auto settlement. Auto mode claim disposal for an advance amount for illness was started in April 2020. In May 2024, EPFO increased the auto settlement limit from Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh.
The EPFO has also introduced the facility of auto mode settlement for education, marriage and housing. Earlier, members could take PF out only when he was admitted to illness/hospital. The claims in auto mode settled within three days and now 95 percent of the claims become automated.
According to sources, by March 6, 2025 in the current financial year, EPFO has achieved a historic record of 2.16 crore auto claim settlement, which was 89.52 lakhs in 2023-24. The claim rejection rate has also been reduced from 50 percent to 30 percent.
The EPFO has presented an auto-calm solution, in which claims are automatically disposed of by the IT system without the need for human intervention. The formalities of validation of PF withdrawal have been reduced from 27 to 18, and it has been decided to reduce it to 6 in the meeting.
The claim settlement process is being made easier by centralized under a centralized IT competent system of members of members. Claims with KYC, eligibility and bank verification are automatically processed for payment through IT devices. This has reduced the claim settlement period from 10 days to 3-4 days. The claims that are not valid by the system are not rejected, rather they are taken for second level investigation and approval.
Taking a new step for Indian employees, EPFO is going to start a new system for PF withdrawal through Unified Payments Interface (UPI). Last week, Labor and Employment Secretary Sumita Davada had said that the ministry has approved the recommendation of NPCI and members will be able to remove PF through UPI and ATM by May or June. It can also be a good pilot project for the General Provident Fund (GPF) of government employees and the Public Provident Fund (PPF) of banks.
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