EPFO relaxes UAN rule for PF settlement, but sets riders

Retirement fund body Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has relaxed the provision that requires furnishing of Universal Account Number (UAN) for settlement of claims like PF withdrawal for all those who left membership before January 1, 2014.

The EPFO had made it mandatory to provide the UAN on claim application forms in December 2015.

"The decision to relax this condition of providing the UAN for claim settlement was taken after considering difficulties being faced by those members who were not alloted the UAN," an official said.

"UANs were initially alloted to all those members who were subscribers during January to June 2014. This decision was taken to facilitate all those members who ceased to be in employment before January 1, 2014."

It has been decided that claim forms may be accepted without the UAN if the date of exit of the member is before January 1, 2014. Besides in exceptional cases, the officer in-charge may allow acceptance of claim forms without the UAN, at his discretion based on the merit .

Quoting the UAN on claim forms was made mandatory with an objective of reducing chances of error. Since the UAN is seeded with Aadhaar, bank account and other credentials, it helps legitimate claimants get their due without any hassle.

The EPFO had started allotting the UAN in July 2014. It had alloted over four crore UANs to its contributing subscribers. Members can activate their UANs themselves and manage them like any other bank account online.

The UAN helps members get their passbook details and allows them to tag other credentials like the PAN and Aadhaar. Besides, the UAN remains portable during lifetime of subscribers. Thus, they are not required to apply for PF transfer claims on changing jobs.