Activate inoperative EPF accounts and claim your Employee Provident Fund Money

Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), India has launched an initiative to help EPF members with inoperative accounts claim their money and locate their account details. An EPF account is termed as inoperative if there is no contribution made to the account for 36 continuous months. An inoperative account doesn't earn any interest hence it makes sense to either withdraw that hard earned money of yours or to transfer it to the EPF account opened at your current organization.

Many of us tend to not do this because of the tedious documentation procedure associated with such tasks. However, not with the launch of online facility it has become very easy to get your money back from an inoperative account. The government is even running awareness campaigns around it and today's Economic Times has a quarter page print ad to inform people about this.

Interested individuals can easily locate the details of their inoperative accounts by logging at www.epfindia.gov.in. The online helpdesk will trace the concerned inoperative account and help you to either transfer it your current P.F. account or withdraw that amount.

Once you have submitted your details at the above mentioned portal, a reference ID is created that can be used to track the status of your application. However, as a prerequisite, all applicants are required to get their UAN activated before applying for settlement of their PF Accounts. The UAN activation can be done at following URL: uanmembers.epfoservices.in

Fig: Snapshot Inoperative EPF Claim Helpdesk as on 06 May 2015

On starting the process you are asked to submit the problem description in a textbox. Please mention that your PF account has become inoperative and you want to claim your money back and get it transferred / withdrawn as per your individual preference. On clicking next, you are a shown a form in which you are required to submit various details related to the account that you are trying to locate. Please fill the form and click next. On clicking next a reference ID will be generated and you will be sent a PIN to the mobile number that you have submitted while filling the form. This reference ID and mobile number can be used to Login subsequently and track your application status. You will also get an acknowledgement mail on the shared email ID as a confirmation towards successful submission of your request.

Online transfer claim of EPF by Employee's Provident Fund Organization (EPFO)

Good news for all the people who have been wanting to transfer their PF amount from previous employment accounts to the current one but couldn't do it due to the hassles of doing it manually and all kind of problematic experiences that you get to hear from your colleagues.

Employee's Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) has launched a new system to facilitate online submission of transfer claims by members with an objective to make the transfer process transparent, efficient and comfortable.

The process is beneficial not just for the employees but also for the employers. Under the previous system the employers were supposed to send the physical papers of PF transfer claims raised by the employees to the EPFO office  with their recommendation. However, under the new online system employers can verify the details of the claims using the EPFO portal for employers.

The EPFO office also sends reminder SMSes to the employers regarding pending transfer requests from the employees. This will lead to quick action by the employers and make them more accountable. Employees too can track the status of their transfer application online and see who is responsible for the delay, if any.

Pre-requisites/Eligibility: Who can transfer PF online?

For transferring your EPF amount online from a previous employer to the current employer the following conditions need to be fulfilled:

• Both previous and present member IDs (PF Account No.) should be available in  EPFO database
• The employers should have registered the digital signature certificate of their authorized signatories with EPFO. This is mandatory for employers to be able to verify claim papers online by digitally signing it off

If both previous and current employers have not registered their digital signatures online the transfer process will need to be completed offline.

Employees can check their eligibility for claiming online EPF transfer here: http://memberclaims.epfoservices.in/check_eligibility.php

Information that you need for initiating the transfer:

• Your bank account no. along with IFSC code
• PF account numbers from both the employer. You would find this on your payslip. The format is like GN/GGN/0012345/000/XXXXX i.e. State Code/Regional PF Office Code/Establishment Code/Extension/Employee PF number. The Extension generally is 000 and can be left blank in most of the cases.
• Date of joining and leaving the previous establishment and date of joining of current establishment. It generally gets pre-filled on submitting the PF number however if doesn't you would need to provide the same
• Date of birth and name of spouse/father as mentioned in the company records

 
 Below are the steps for requesting a PF transfer as an Employee:

1. Log in to the online transfer claim portal here: http://memberclaims.epfoservices.in/
    Note: If this is the first time you are using online EPFO portal, you will need to register and create
    your profile here http://members.epfoservices.in/employee_reg_form.php

2. After succesful login you will see the following page

3. Fill in the Part A details i.e. Personal information as shown in the above picture

4. Fill in Part B details i.e. details of the previous account which is to be transferred. Once the details have been entered, click on the grey button labeled  "Click Here To Get Details"

On doing so the details of you EPF account will get auto-filled as per the details available with EPFO office. If you find any of the field to be blank, please manually submit the respective information.

If the information in the next five fields is non-blank but incorrect, you can approach your employer to correct this data. To do the correction, press the "Following information is incorrect" button. A request letter shall be generated for further submission to your employer (Important: This claim can not be submitted digitally).

5. Fill in Part C details i.e. details of the current account to which the amount is to be credited. Once the details have been entered, click on the grey button labeled  "Click Here To Get Details"

 If all the details are correct select the claim attestation option. You can select either the previous or the current employer for this attestation. In case of attestation by the previous employer, time taken in settlement will be relatively less.

Finally, you will be able to process the claim online only if the employers have registered their digital signatures online with the EPFO office. If both previous and current employers have not registered their digital signatures online the transfer process will need to be completed offline.

Once you have successfully submitted the EPF transfer claim, the application status can be tracked using the "View Status of Transfer Claim" link under the "Claim" head of the menu bar as shown below:

For more information visit: http://www.epfindia.com/employee_OTCP.html