EPFO targets to make UANs operational by Oct 15

Retirement fund manager EPFO that has initiated the process of seeding KYC details like PAN, Aadhaar of contributing members for making Universal Account Number (UAN) has set a target of seeding 2 crore (20 million) bank account data by end of this month, an official said.

EPFO, which has 4.17 contributing members, has set the target of making UANs operational by October 15.

"So far, overall data seeding is more than 1 crore (10 million). We should have minimum 2 crore bank account numbers by August 31," Central Provident Fund Commissioner Krishan Kumar Jalan told reporters here today.

EPFO on July 25 issued Universal PF Account Numbers for 4.17 crore contributing members. They have been made available to the employers who in turn have to seed the numbers with workers' KYC details such as bank account, PAN and Aadhaar. EPFO has set September 15 as deadline for completing this task.

These 4.17 crore (41.7 million) UANs are expected to be operational by October 15, he said.

"We have already allocated Universal Account Numbers (UANs) to 4.17 crore members on July 25, but it is without data. We are now making the employers to fill in the data. We will have data in respect of 2 crore workers by August 31 and then we will be able to start giving some services on the basis of that," he said.

The UAN will be portable throughout the working career of the members and can be used anywhere in India. Thus, they will not need to apply for transfer of PF account on changing jobs.

Jalan said the EPFO wants that the firms must provide Aadhaar/NPR number of workers wherever available and bank a/c number as part of the KYC detail because it will enable EPFO in future to provide services directly to the beneficiaries without intermediation of the employers.

"We will be able to transfer the amounts to their (members) bank accounts. It will make life of EPFO

stakeholders easy. This will also help us in reducing Rs 32,000 crore (Rs 320 billion) amount lying in inoperative accounts. With Aadhaar, identification on members will be known and they will be asked to withdraw the amounts from the inoperative accounts."