Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) introduced four new rules to ease and expedite claim settlements

Auto settlement: The EPFO introduced the new facility of auto-settlement for housing under Rule 68B and education and marriage under Rule 68K through a press release on May 13, 2024. It mandates any claim up to ₹1,00,000 should be settled without any human intervention.

Multi-location claim settlement: To expedite the EPF claim process within the specified timeline, EPFO launched a link office setup for settlement across multiple locations. This will minimise the time taken to settle cases by spreading the burden of hastening claim settlements across the country. This will also abolish the present geographical jurisdiction structure and productivity.

EPF death claims without Aadhaar seeding: To simplify death claims when Aadhaar details are missing, EPFO now allows physical claims without needing Aadhaar. This is a temporary measure, and it requires approval from the Officer in Charge (OIC), who will verify and record the deceased’s membership and relationship with the claimants. This process is only applicable when the member's details are correct in the UAN but wrong in the UID database.

Relaxation on the mandatory upload of the cheque leaf: The EPFO eased the mandatory rule of uploading a cheque leaf image or attested bank passbook while applying for a claim settlement. This relaxation came via a circular on May 28, 2024. This change will not only quicken the online process of settling claims but will also reduce the number of rejection cases due to faulty upload of cheque leaves or bank passbooks. However, the EPFO also mentioned that this new criterion will be applicable only to select cases, based on validations like online verification and Bank KYC by the concerned bank/NPCI, verification of the bank KYC by the employer using DSC, Aadhar numbers verified by UIDAI, etc.