EPFO Claim Settlement: Provident Fund subscribers are going to get a gift in the new year! The Ministry of Labor and Employment has formed a five-member committee to develop a strategy to speed up auto claim settlement in EPFO and eliminate the need for manual processing. More than 75 million EPFO members will benefit from this initiative.
EPFO currently allows automatic settlement of partial withdrawals up to Rs 1 lakh for housing, education and marriage purposes. While earlier there was a limit of Rs 50,000 for medical expenses. Apart from this, automatic settlement is available for all pension claims under the Employees’ Pension Scheme (EPF) or Provident Fund through EPFO, subject to application verification.
Will claim settlement speed up?
According to a TOI report, the aim is to make the automated claim settlement process technically more efficient and seamless. Also, to reduce rejections to a great extent. The committee headed by G Madhumita Das, financial advisor to the ministry, is scheduled to submit its findings by the middle of next month.
Many difficulties come in claim settlement
Internal evaluation shows that only 40 per cent of claims are settled automatically, while more than 60 per cent of claims are rejected due to verification-related issues. After which these rejected applications need to be processed manually, which significantly increases the time limit of settlement.
So many claims were settled in the year 2023-24
In such a situation, unnecessary verification should also be eliminated to reduce the rejection rate. According to sources, currently, applications have to undergo 27 back-end verification checks before the settlement process starts. In the year 2023-24, the EPFO had settled 44.5 million claims. The settlement timelines showed that 13.9 million claims were completed within three days. Whereas, 14.3 million claims took 10 days, 14.5 million claims 20 days and 1.8 million claims took more than 20 days.
The settled claims included 40.9 million provident fund (PF) claims including final settlements, advances and partial withdrawals, 3.45 million pension-related claims and benefits and 75,000 insurance claims under the Employees Deposit Linked Insurance Scheme (EDLI).
DISCLAIMER
We have taken all measures to ensure that the information provided in this article and on our social media platform is credible, verified and sourced from other Big media Houses. For any feedback or complaint, reach out to us at informalnewz@gmail.com
