NEW DELHI: Retirement fund body EPFO is expected to launch online facility for settlement of claims, including EPF withdrawal and pension fixation, by May this year to put an end to tedious paper work by its members.At present, the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) receive close to 1 crore applications manually for settlement of EPF withdrawal claim, pension fixation or getting group insurance benefit by deceased persons. "The process of connecting all field offices with a central server is going on. We may introduce the facility for online submission of all types of applications and claims like EPF withdrawal and pension settlement by May this year," EPFO's Central Provident Fund Commissioner V P Joy told PTI.Joy said that all EPFO offices would be connected to central server in couple of months following which the facility of online submission of all sort of applications can be introduced.EPFO has an ambitious plan to settle the claims within few hours after filing of application. This will help linking EPF account, pension account , bank account and Aadhaar number which would eventually facilitate providing a host of online facilities to subscribers like online withdrawal and fixation of pension.The body has recently extended the deadline for submitting Aadhaar for its subscribers and pensioners till March 31, 2017. Seeding of Aadhaar number with the EPF, pension and bank accounts is required for settling claims online to reduce public interface for bringing in more transparency.

Source: Economic Times February 19, 2017 08:15 UTC