PF subscribers may get to pledge pay-outs to buy low-cost homes

The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation’s apex <g data-gr-id="38">decision making</g> body, the Central Board of Trustees (CBT) will consider the report of the expert committee on housing facility for the subscribers, as per the agenda of the meeting.

The committee has unanimously recommended a scheme to facilitate subscribers to buy houses where they will get an advance from their provident fund accumulation and will be allowed to pledge their future provident fund contribution as equated monthly instalment (EMI) payment. Under the proposed scheme, there will be <g data-gr-id="48">tripartite</g> agreement with <g data-gr-id="49">member</g>, bank/ housing agency and the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation for pledging future provident fund contributions as equated monthly instalment payment.

The panel suggested that under the scheme, the subscribers will purchase a dwelling unit with loans from bank or housing finance companies and hypothecation of property in favour of the latter. It is suggested that the benefits under the schemes of Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation can also be extended to the beneficiaries of the scheme.

However, the panel has suggested this scheme for low income formal workers who are Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation subscribers and could not buy a house during their entire service period. Besides, the Central Board of Trustees, headed by the labour minister, will also take up the proposal to increase the maximum sum assured under its insurance scheme EDLI to Rs 5.5 lakh from existing Rs 3.6 lakh. The proposal will be vetted by a sub-committee tomorrow for making final recommendations to the Central Board of Trustees.

The trustees will also consider a proposal to provide incentives to Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation pensioners for digitally filing their live certificates. At present, these certificates are manually filed by pensioners at the banks. The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation pays service charges to banks for collecting these live certificates of pensioners.

Under the proposed Jeevan Pramaan Patra scheme, the pensioners’ live certificate will be collected through e-mode. It is proposed to provide <g data-gr-id="37">one time</g> incentive of Rs 100 to pensioners registering under the scheme and Rs 30 for subsequent years.  The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation has about 51 lakh pensioners.

It is also proposed to provide incentives to employers to encourage seeding universal account number with know your customer (KYC) details like bank account number, PAN and Aadhaar. The employers will be refunded a part of administrative charges under this proposed scheme.

The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation will also place performance review of its fund managers for 2014-15 before the Central Board of Trustees, which placed State Bank of India (SBI) at the top with a score of 99.64 out of 100 followed by Reliance Capital (99.49), ICICI Securities PD Ltd (99.42) and HSBC AML (99).