The Employees' Provident Fund Organisation will provide a permanent or universal account number (UAN) on the pattern of core banking services to its over five crore active subscribers by October 15 this year.
Under core banking services, customers can avail themselves of the bank services in any of its branch through the allotted unique account number.
UAN will facilitate subscribers in avoiding filing of PF transfer claims on changing jobs.
“UAN will be allotted to the present active members by October 15, 2014 and thereafter the coverage of other members will be taken up,” the EPFO action plan for this fiscal stated.
After getting UAN, a subscriber would not be issued new PF account number on joining new firm. It is expected to provide great relief to those workers in organised sector who frequently change jobs, particularly, in the construction sector.
UAN would be one account number which would be allotted to a subscriber for various schemes run by EPFO for his entire service period with different employers.
UAN programme
EPFO has engaged C-DAC for preparing a roadmap for implementing the UAN programme for its subscribers.
The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) is the premier research and development organisation under the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology for carrying out R&D in IT, Electronics and associated areas.
According to EPFO officials, UAN will help reduce the workload of EPFO to a great extent as it receives over 12 lakh claims annually for transfer of PF account on changing of jobs by its subscribers.
EPFO has settled over 1.21 crore PF claims this fiscal, including PF withdrawal and transfer, including around 12 lakh PF transfer claims.
The official said that a large number of subscribers prefer to close their PF and pension account with EPFO and seek withdrawal of their funds rather than applying for transfer of PF account on changing jobs as it has been a time consuming process.
However, EPFO had started the facility of filing online transfer of PF account claims in October last year to make the transaction faster.