EPFO News: The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has initiated some game-changing reforms to benefit over 7 crore members. The retirement fund body has simplified the joint declaration process, implemented a Centralised Pension Payment System (CPPS), taken action on policies related to higher pensions for members, enabled online member profile updates, and made easy PF transfers.

Below are the details of each of these changes to help members manage their provident fund more effectively.

Centralized Pension Payment System

Centralized Pension Payments System (CPPS) has been fully rolled out in all regional offices of EPFO across India.

CPPS enables pension payments through the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), allowing pensions to be processed for any bank account in any branch of any scheduled commercial bank across India. Regional Offices (ROs) are now equipped as CPPS-enabled offices.

Read also – Corrections in EPFO portal, account transfers simplified

A full-scale rollout of the CPPS under the Employees’ Pension Scheme 1995 happened in December 2024. The government disbursed about Rs 1,570-crore pension to more than 68 lakh pensioners, spanning all 122 pension-disbursing regional offices of EPFO for December 2024.

The first pilot of the project was completed in October 2024, and the second pilot was taken up in November 2024.

The new facility has eliminated the need for physical verification visits and simplified the pension disbursement process.

Clarification on higher pension

The Executive Committee (EC) of the Central Board of Trustees (CBT) of the EPFO last week took up the matter of the pending applications of subscribers who opted for higher pensions, post a Supreme Court ruling in 2022.

The CBT is the highest decision-making body of the EPFO. The body is the final authority on decisions about interest rates, investments, and the development of new systems, among others.

According to an official release, the CBT’s executive panel was apprised about the expeditious examination of pending applications—related to higher pensions—of over 100,000 cases in the past month, the issuance of 21,000 demand letters by regular monitoring of the field offices, and the issuance of clarifications. The EC recommended holding regular “video conferences” with employers to accelerate the correction in such cases.

EPFO members’ profile updation

The EPFO will now allow the members whose Universal Account Number (UAN) has already been validated through Aadhaar to update their profile name, date of birth, gender, nationality, father/mother’s name, marital status, spouse name, date of joining, and date of leaving themselves without the requirement of uploading any document. Only, in certain cases where UAN was obtained before October 1, 2017, the updation would require certification of the employer.

Joint declaration process

The retirement fund body recently issued guidelines on the joint declaration process. The process has been simplified with the EPFO replacing certain recommendations from SOP Version 3.0. The new guidelines replace the earlier version of the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP Version 3.0), which was issued on July 31, 2024.

The latest updates include specific changes introduced to streamline the process, including new classifications for members, revised document submission methods, and updated procedures for employers and claimants.

Transfer of PF account

The retirement fund body has also simplified the procedure for transferring PF accounts for EPFO members who change jobs.

Read also – EPFO members attention! You can transfer your PF account without employer approval – Here’s how!

The requirement to route online transfer claims through either the previous or current employer has been removed in majority of cases. With the introduction of the revised process, it is expected that in the future, over 1.20 crore out of 1.30 crore total transfer claims, i.e. 94% of the total claims, would be directly forwarded to EPFO without requiring the employer’s intervention.

Presently, transfer claims in certain situations do not require any approval from the employer when a member leaves employment and joins another establishment.

This simplified process will result in a considerable reduction of the turnaround time as the claim is submitted by members. It will also greatly reduce the member grievances considerably along with the corresponding rejections. Large employers who have a large workload of approving such cases will have significant improvement in the ease of doing business.