EPFO cautions members in opposition to taking assist from brokers for on-line companies, ETCFO
Retirement fund physique EPFO on Monday cautioned its members in opposition to taking assist from third-party brokers and suggested utilizing on-line portal for companies associated to their provident fund accounts to keep away from publicity dangers to key particulars.
The Staff’ Provident Fund Group (EPFO) has taken a collection of reforms to make companies quicker, clear and user-friendly for all its stakeholders, a labour ministry assertion stated.
EPFO has greater than 7 crore members who’re staff or ex-employees of varied personal and public sector enterprises.
It has been noticed that a number of cyber cafe operators/fintech firms are charging EPFO members massive sums of cash for companies which can be formally free, it said. In lots of instances, these operators merely use EPFO’s on-line grievance portal, one thing any member can do on their very own, freed from price.
The stakeholders are cautioned in opposition to visiting or participating with third-party firms or brokers for EPFO-related companies as this may increasingly expose their monetary information, the assertion stated, including these exterior entities are usually not authorised by EPFO.
It additional stated that EPFO has a strong grievance monitoring and redressal system whereby the member grievances are registered on CPGRAMS or EPFiGMS portals and are monitored until their decision in a time-bound method.
A complete of 16,01,202 grievances had been acquired in EPFiGMS and 1,74,328 in CPGRAMS in FY25.
Out of those, 98 per cent of the grievances had been resolved inside timelines. EPFO strongly advises all its members, employers, and pensioners to utilise the web companies obtainable by the EPFO portal and UMANG app.
All EPFO companies, together with declare submitting, fund transfers, KYC updation, and grievance redressal, are fully freed from price and members shouldn’t pay any charges to third-party brokers or cyber cafes for companies that may be simply accessed on-line.
Additional, members can contact EPFO helpdesks/PROs at regional workplaces as listed on the official web site (www.epfindia.gov.in) for any points, it stated.
The EPFO has lately issued circulars for simplification of KYC or member particulars correction and for submission of switch claims, deployment of performance for auto settlement of advance claims as much as Rs 1 lakh and Centralized Pension Cost System (CPPS) for simplifying the pension disbursement course of.
The restrict of auto declare settlement facility was enhanced to Rs 1 lakh for advances on the grounds of sickness, housing, marriage and training, leading to 2.34 crore claims settled in auto mode in FY 2024-25.
The switch declare course of has additionally been simplified from January 15, 2025 by eradicating the requirement of employer approvals in many of the instances.
The EPFO has eliminated the requirement of importing of the picture of cheque leaf/attested financial institution passbook for fast settlement of claims filed on-line and to scale back the rejection of claims.
Additionally, the requirement of employer approval for seeding checking account particulars with UAN (distinctive account quantity) has been faraway from April 2025, it added.>
