The Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) Organisation now has a completely online process for withdrawals from your EPF corpus. Using this facility, you can make final claim settlements, partial withdrawals as well as pension benefit withdrawals. The new online system is expected to reduce the settlement time for claims from about 20 days at present to around 10 days. However, this facility is available only for those who have an active Universal Account Number (UAN) and have linked this account with their Aadhaar number.
Here is a step-by-step guide on how to link your EPF account with Aadhaar.
When you change jobs, your employer creates a new EPF account, called member ID, for you. The UAN is a single account number that has details of all your EPF member IDs. You can get your UAN number from your employer. You can also check your UAN from the ‘Know your UAN status on the EPF member portal. To use this option, you will need your EPF member ID, which is usually mentioned on your salary slip.
You will need to activate the UAN from the ‘activate UAN’ option on the EPF member portal. This includes creating a password for logging into the member interface. Your UAN as a user ID and the password you create, can be used for all of EPF’s online facilities, including checking your EPF passbook.
After you login to your member interface, find the tab labelled ‘manage’. Under this tab, click the KYC button.
Here you will find a list of most common KYC documents that you can use to activate the UAN. To be able to use the online withdrawal facility, select ‘Aadhaar’ from the list and fill in your details—your name, exactly as it is in the Aadhaar database and your Aadhaar number.
Note that while processing your claim through the online claims facility, the EPF system will move forward only if your name, date of birth and gender in your Aadhaar records match your details that are available with the EPF. Accordingly, if there are mismatches in your record, make it a point to make the corrections wherever needed. Moreover, while making an online claim, you will receive an one-time password (OTP) for authentication over SMS from the Aadhaar authority. So, make sure that the phone number that you have registered with Aadhaar is in working condition.
For the online claims facility to work, you also need to submit your bank account information—account number, name as in bank records and IFSC code. Also, if you have not been an EPF member for 5 years, and want to make a claim for permanent settlement, you will also need to submit your PAN number.
Once you submit these details, click ‘Save’ on the page. After this, these documents will be listed under ‘pending KYC’ on the same page. It could take between one and two weeks for the approval, according to EPF officials. Once a particular document is approved, it will be listed under ‘approved KYC’ on the same page.
After you have your Aadhaar, bank details and PAN under the ‘approved KYC’ list, you are eligible to submit an online claim for withdrawals.
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