EPFO Increases Auto Claim Limit to Rs. 5 Lakh: EPFO Big Update:

EPFO Increases Auto Claim Limit to Rs. 5 Lakh: EPFO Big Update The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has introduced some significant changes to simplify the process of accessing provident funds for its affiliated 7.5 members. They are anticipated to increase their auto claim limit from Rs. 1 lakh to Rs. 5 lakh without any further approval. The main motive is to make the process simpler and more convenient for its members to access their money. The decision was approved by the Secretary of the Ministry of Labour and Employment, Sumita Dawra, in a meeting of the EPFO's board in Srinagar last week. As per the reports, once the Central Board of Trustees (CBT) approves the proposal, the EPFO members will be allowed to withdraw money upto to the limit of Rs. 5 lakh, as per the Automated Settlement of Advance Claims (ASAC). The auto claim system was first introduced in April 2020 for medical emergencies. Since then, it has been expanded to allow withdrawals for other needs, like education, marriage, and housing. The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) also raised the auto claim limit in May 2024 from Rs. 50,000 to 1 lakh. In the new proposal, the authority is anticipated to raise the limit to Rs. 5 lakh, which will be processed in three days. Most of these withdrawals (95%) will be done automatically, without any human involvement, thanks to EPFO’s AI-based auto-claim system. EPFO has successfully reviewed and completed 2.16 crore auto-claim settlements this year as of March 6, 2025. An increase of 89.52 lakh has been seen as compared to last year 2023-24. Along with this, the total number of rejected claims has dropped from 50% to 30%. In order to make the process simpler, the EPFO has also reduced the number of steps required for PF withdrawals from 27 to 18. Now, the EPFO is thinking of further reducing the steps to only six. Now, the EPFO is also planning to introduce Unified Payments Interface (UPI) into the PF withdrawal system. Soon, the members will be able to directly receive their PF funds through applications such as Paytm, Google Pay and PhonePe. According to Sumita Dawra, the Ministry has approved NPCI's proposal, and the system is expected to be available by May or June 2025. The UPI option is expected to make the claim settlements process much faster — instead of taking 2–3 days, once the UPI system is introduced, the process will just take a few minutes. It will also help reduce rejections and make the process more transparent. This change may eventually be extended to other schemes like the General Provident Fund (GPF) and Public Provident Fund (PPF).