EPFO’s subscribers to get real time update from 16 October

Over four crore subscribers of the retirement fund body EPFO would be able to access their provident fund accounts online on real time basis using a dedicated members' web portal from 16 October.

The Universal Account Number (UAN) member's portal will help Employees' Provident Fund Organisation's (EPFO) to monitor whether their employers are depositing their PF contributions.

The UAN members' portal is likely to be launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 16 October, a senior official said adding that in the first phase the members' accounts would be accessible and become portable for lifetime.

As the UAN will be a portable account, the formal sector workers would not have to apply for transfer of PF accounts on changing jobs. The official said that eventually the EPFO would provide more value added services like paperless settlement of provident fund withdrawal claims like retirement and fixing of pension after attaining the age of 58 years.

According to him, the EPFO is on track to complete the seeding of over four crore UANs issued in the last week of July this year.

As per the information uploaded on the website of the EPFO, there are 4.18 crore contributing members who are employed in 4.3 lakh different firms across the country. At present, EPFO has already captured bank account details in respect of 2.04 crore employees, PAN details of 92.94 lakh employees and Aadhar number in respect of 35.4 lakh workers.

The official said that in order to improve the quality of service under the UAN programme, at least bank account number of all the members need to be seeded with portable PF accounts as this would make the PF withdrawal and other claims settlements less time consuming.

EPFO has recently made it mandatory for firms to provide their employees' bank account numbers with IFSC code of bank branch to facilitate allotment of universal PF account number and payment to its subscribers.