In a bid to provide better services to employers, employees and pensioners as well as to bring about ease of compliance and governance, retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has taken various initiatives recently, including the launch of Pensioner’s Portal on its website and introduction of new facilities for UAN- Aadhaar linking for the convenience of its members. We are taking a look at some of such
1. View Pension Passbook Service for pensioners
EPFO, which is providing lots of e-services to its stakeholders, has recently introduced a new service for pensioners via the Umang App. Any pensioner willing to view his pension passbook needs to click the “View Passbook” option and enter the PPO Number and his DoB (Date of Birth). An OTP will be sent to the pensioner’s registered mobile number after the information fed gets validated. Once the OTP is entered, the “Pensioner Passbook” will display the pensioner’s details, including his name and DOB. In fact, a number of e-services provided by EPFO are already available through the UMANG aap, including employee centric services, employer centric cervices, general services, pensioner services, and eKYC services.
2. Pensioner’s Portal at EPFO website
The retirement fund body has also launched the pensioner’s portal (https://mis.epfindia.gov.in/PensionPaymentEnquiry) at its website. Through this service all the pensioners of EPFO may get the details of their pension-related information like pension payment order details, pension payment order number, passbook information as well as other related information like submission of pensioner’s life certificate, date of credit of pension, among others. In case of non-submission or rejection of life certificate, it is helpful to know the status of their life certificate. It will also provide the reason of the stoppage of pension.
3. EPFO members to be informed about contributions not deposited by employers
EPFO will now inform its members in case contributions are not deposited by their employers with it for a given month in due time. The members, who have registered their mobile number or email ID against respective UAN, will be informed about it by way of SMS or email. Currently, EPFO only informs its members about the credit of monthly contribution into their account by SMS or email to the registered Universal Account Number (UAN) holders. Credit information is also available through UMANG mobile App, e-passbook online as well as through the missed call service. The EPFO members can also view their contribution details using any of these options.
4. EPFO members to be allowed to increase or decrease PF investments into stocks
In a bid to give better returns on their contributions, EPFO plans to give its 5 crore members the option to increase or decrease their PF investments into stocks through the exchange trade funds (ETFs) in the current financial year. The retirement fund body plans to credit ETF investments in its members’ PF accounts in about 3 months. After that EPFO will give an option to the members to increase or decrease investments in ETFs from their PF accounts. EPFO’s Central Provident Fund Commissioner V P Joy recently told PTI that they will develop a software to credit ETFs into the subscribers’ PF accounts, which will take about 2 to 3 months. “Once that is done, we will go for the next phase to give an option to members to increase or decrease stock investments,” he added.
5. Launch of e-Nomination facility
Keeping in view the government’s digital drive, EPFO has also introduced e-Nomination facility for its members for filing the nomination form. This facility is available at Member Interface of EPFO Unified Portal (https://unifiedportal-mem.epfindia.gov.in/memberinterface/). Any EPFO subscriber who has activated and got his UAN Aadhaar seeded, can avail this facility. The good news is that this functionality is not dependent on the employer. The member is required to digitally sign the nomination after giving nomination details online. Aadhaar-based eSign is being used for the nomination form’s digital signing.
