New Year cheer for Provident Fund subscribersThe Labor and Employment Ministry has established a 5-individual committee to develop a technique for expediting auto declare settlements at EPFO while eliminating guide processing necessities. This initiative will have an effect on greater than 75 million EPFO members.
EPFO at present permits automatic settlement of partial withdrawals as much as Rs 1 lakh for housing, training and marriage functions, in comparison with the earlier Rs 50,000 restrict for medical bills.
Additionally, automatic settlement is accessible for all pension claims underneath the Employees’ Pension Scheme (EPF) or provident fund by means of EPFO, topic to utility validation.
“The idea is to make the automatic claim settlement process more technically savvy and seamless while substantially reducing rejections,” a senior authorities official informed ET. The committee, led by G Madhumita Das, the ministry’s monetary advisor, is scheduled to current its findings by mid-subsequent month, in keeping with the official.
EPFO Report Card
Internal evaluations point out that solely 40% of claims obtain automatic settlement, with over 60% going through rejection as a consequence of validation points.
Consequently, these rejected purposes require guide processing, which considerably extends the settlement timeline.
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“The plan is to simultaneously do away with unnecessary validations to bring down the rate of rejection,” the official stated.
Currently, purposes should go by means of 27 again-finish validation checks earlier than settlement processing begins, as famous by the supply.
In 2023-24, EPFO processed 44.5 million claims. The settlement timeline confirmed 13.9 million claims accomplished inside three days, 14.3 million inside 10 days, 14.5 million inside 20 days, and 1.8 million requiring over 20 days.
The settled claims comprised 40.9 million provident fund (PF) claims, together with ultimate settlements, advances and partial withdrawals, 3.45 million pension-associated claims and advantages, and 75,000 insurance coverage claims underneath the Employees’ Deposit Linked Insurance Scheme (EDLI).
