The Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has called the latest relaxation for settling Employees Provident Fund (EPF) accounts of dead subscribers who haven’t seeded Aadhaar a temporary measure and is being allowed to provide relief to nominees needing money urgently. Its May 17 circular amends its previous order on September 9, 2020, regarding claim settlement in the absence of the Universal Account Number (UAN) in the case of an employee’s death.

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EPF is a small savings scheme for retirement. Under the scheme, the employee and the employer contribute to the fund in equal amounts every month. A portion of it also goes to the Employee Pension Scheme (EPS), which is mandatory and paid after retirement. An employee can withdraw partially from the EPF fund during specified emergencies and entirely on retirement or if the subscriber remains out of a job for two months.

However, in case of death, the nominee, surviving family member, or legal heir is eligible to claim the fund. As per the EPFO’s previous rules, the nominee must provide the UAN and Aadhaar details for the settlement. However, this time, it has waived this rule.

Allowed Only After Verifying Membership and Claimants

The latest circular states: “Given that Aadhaar details cannot be corrected/updated after the death of the member, it has been decided that henceforth, in all such death cases, processing of physical claims without seeding Aadhaar may be allowed as a temporary measure but only with the due approval of the OIC (office in-charge) in an e-office file duly recording the details to confirm the membership of the deceased and the genuineness of the claimants.”

The claimants must also provide the correct details of the member as in UAN. However, if the UAN details are inaccurate but the Aadhaar details are correct, in that case, the EPFO has provided guidelines on how to approach the case to settle the claim.

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The circular reads: “Wherever the data in Aadhaar are correct but inaccurate/incomplete in UAN, the instructions issued in Para 6.9 and 6.10 of JD SOP version-2 dated 26.03.2024 will be strictly adhered to by the field offices to the data in the UAN, seed & validate/authenticate the Aadhaar to comply with the instructions as issued in the circular dated 24.09.2020.”

Para 6.9 refers to the standard operating procedure (SOP) to be followed by the department in case of an online claim settlement request by a deceased member’s nominee. Para 6.10 details the procedure in case a member dies without linking Aadhaar.

The circular comes after the field offices reported cases where officials could not verify member’s details due to incomplete or inaccurate information in the absence of Aadhaar.