EPFO might allow pledging of PF contributions to buy low-cost houses

EPFO’s trustees will consider a proposal to allow its subscribers to pledge their future PF contribution to buy low-cost houses, in a meeting scheduled on September 16.

The EPFO’s apex decision-making body, the Central Board of Trustees will consider the report of the expert committee on housing facility for the subscribers, according to 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 PF accumulation and will be allowed to pledge their future PF contribution as EMI payment.

Under the proposed scheme, there will be tripartite agreement with member, bank/housing agency and EPFO for pledging future PF contributions as EMI 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 EPFO subscribers and could not buy a house during their entire service period.

Besides, the CBT 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 CBT.

The trustees will also consider a proposal to provide incentives to EPFO pensioners for digitally filing their live certificates.

At present, these certificates are manually filed by pensioners at the banks. EPFO 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 one time incentive of Rs 100 to pensioners registering under the scheme and Rs 30 for subsequent years. EPFO 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.

EPFO will also place performance review of its fund managers for 2014-15 before CBT, which placed 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).