EPFO to provide permanent A/c number from October this year

Universal account number will facilitate subscribers to avoid filing PF account transfer claims on changing jobs

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Retirement fund body EPFO will start providing permanent account numbers on the pattern of core banking services to its over five crore subscribers from October this year.

Permanent or universal account number (UAN) will facilitate subscribers to avoid filing PF account transfer claims on changing jobs.

After getting UAN, a subscriber would not be issued new PF account number on joining new employer.

It is expected to provide great relief to those workers in organised sector who frequently change jobs, particularly, in the construction sector.

The UAN would be one account number which would be allotted to a subscriber for various schemes run by the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) for his or her entire service period with different employers.

"We have engaged C-DAC for preparing a roadmap for implementing the UAN programme for our subscribers. We will launch it on October 1 this year," EPFO's Central Provident Fund Commissioner K K Jalan told PTI.

The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) is the premier research and development organisation under the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology for carrying out R&D in IT, Electronics and associated areas.

According to a senior EPFO official, the UAN will help reduce the workload of the EPFO to a great extent as it receives over 12 lakh claims for transfer of PF account on changing of jobs by its subscribers.

EPFO has settled over 1.1 crore PF claims including PF withdrawal and transfer till February end of this fiscal. It expects 1.2 crore such claims in 2013-14, including around 13 lakh PF transfer claims.

The official said that a large number of subscribers choose to close their PF and pension account with EPFO and seek withdrawal of their funds in view of time consuming process of transfer of PF accounts on changing jobs.

However, the EPFO had started the facility of filing online transfer of PF account claims in October last year to make the transaction faster.

During 2012-13, the EPFO had settled 1.08 crore claims, 88% of which were processed within 30 days, as prescribed by the body's citizen charter.