AI is playing a major role in bringing down the withdrawal time from the usual requirement of 10 days.
In March, the government allowed Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) members to withdraw from their EPF accounts to meet coronavirus-related financial exigencies. According to the amended rules, EPF members can withdraw an amount equal to three months of basic salary plus dearness allowance or 75 per cent of the credit balance of the account, whichever is lower.
According to the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), it settles these pandemic-related claims within three days instead of the usual 10 days. The retirement fund body, in a press release, said that the use of artificial intelligence (AI) has played a big role in allowing it to settle Covid-related advances in three days.
According to the press release, “Turning adversity into advantage, EPFO launched its first fully automatic claim settlement system in a record time of just five days. Almost 54 per cent of the COVID 19 claims are now being settled through the auto mode. This system is expected to drastically cut down claim settlement time for EPFO in future.”
According to the EPFO, with automation and a dedicated workforce, it is settling more than 80,000 claims every working day amounting to about Rs 270 crore. In April and May 2020, the EPFO settled 36.06 lakh claims amounting to Rs 11,540 crore, the retirement fund body stated. Out of this, 15.54 lakh claims, which amounted to Rs 4,580 crore, were related to the recently introduced COVID-19 advance under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY).
Also, more than 74 per cent of total claimants during the lockdown period belonged to slab of less than Rs 15,000 wage. The high income category with wages more than Rs 50,000 accounted for a mere 2 per cent of the claimants. Approximately 24 per cent of the claims were made by members with wages falling in the Rs 15,000 to less than Rs 50,000 category.
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An individual who is a member of the EPF scheme can file this claim only one time. The amount credited to an individual’s bank account is non-refundable, i.e., he/she is not required to refund such an advance to the EPFO.
To file a withdrawal claim online, there are certain criteria that must be satisfied. These are: individual’s EPF account must be KYC-compliant, UAN must be active and linked to Aadhaar, and the bank account and IFSC code in the EPFO records must be correct.
