EPFO to launch online facility to view updated accounts

Retirement fund manager EPFO is all set to launch a facility to provide online updated account statements on real time basis for its over 5 crore subscribers soon after the Monsoon session of Parliament.

At present, the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has to provide annual PF account slips showing account details in a financial year by September.

The new facility would enable subscribers to see online their updated accounts as well as to take out print outs to maintain their records themselves.

'We are all set to launch the facility where subscribers can track their account online on real time basis and check their updated accounts,' an official source said.

According to him, EPFO has asked Labour Minister Sis Ram Ola's office to provide time for launch of the services. The facility is likely to be launched after the Monsoon session, he said.

The facility would be available to the live account holders and may not be provided to inoperative account holders. EPFO makes all those accounts inoperative where contribution is not made for 36 months in a row.

As per the present practise, the EPFO provides PF slips to subscriber once in a year. For instance, EPFO is supposed to provide the PF slip for 2012-13 to subscribers by September 30, 2013.

Sometimes, it takes even more time as EPFO does not provide PF slips directly to the subscribers. Instead, the body hands these over to employers for distribution to workers.

A senior official said that after the launch of this service: 'we may discontinue the system of issuing PF slips once in a year and ask the subscribers and employers to download it from the the website.