The Employees’ Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) will now not require Pension Fund (PF) account holders (employees) to transfer their PF account from their previous employer to their new employer thanks to a decision by the EPFO to give the green signal for development of centralized IT-enabled systems by C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing). An employee’s PF account number can remain the same even if they change jobs after this major decision by the EPFO.

The new functionalities will be shifted to a central database in phases to ensure smoother roll-out, improved operations and easy service delivery. As part of the new system, all the existing accounts of a PF member will be merged into one and also prevent duplication of accounts. This key decision was taken during the 229^th meeting of the EPFO Central Board of Trustee held on 20^th November 2021, headed by Minister for Labour and Employment Bhupender Yadav. As per the existing rules, an employee who is a member of the PF must complete paperwork & application at both their previous and new employers for transfer of PF account, as this is a tedious process, a lot of the members of PF just open a new PF account with their new employer.

While the UAN of the account will be the same, the new account with the new employer will not display the previous existing balance in the account with the old employer – these are the 2 main things which will be changed as the EPFO approved a centralized database development and allowing members to use their existing account with a new employer after change of job.

In another decision, the EPFO has now empowered the Finance Investment and Audit Committee (FIAC) – which is the advisory body of the EPFO for investments and strategies, to make decision on the investment options for investments to be made in all asset classes recognized as investments by the Government of India. The EPFO has also decided to form 4 new sub-committees for establishment related matters + futuristic implementation of social security code and digital capacity building + pension related issues.

These new sub-committees will be comprised of EPFO board members from the employers’ and employees’ sides as well as government representatives. The sub-committees for establishment related issues & futuristic implementation of social security code will be headed by the Minister of State for Labour & Employment. The other 2 sub-committees for digital capacity building and pension related issues will be headed by the Union Labour & Employment Secretary.

EPFO Adds Net 15 lakh New Subscribers in September 2021

As the number of jobs being created in India is on a steady climb, growth in the economic activity heading towards pre-Covid levels, the EPFO added more than 13 lakh net subscribers to the PF in the month of September 2021 which is about 3% more than September 2020 and a growth of more than 1 lakh subscribers compared to August 2021 according to the provisional payroll data. Of the 15+ lakh new subscribers added in September, approximately 8.9 lakh members were new members registered for the first time.

More than 6 lakh members left & re-joined the EPFO by changing jobs. The age group of 18-25 years had the highest number of net enrolments with about 7 lakh net enrolments. This indicates that many first-time job seekers are joining the organised sector workforce in large numbers and have contributed around 47.39 % of total net subscriber additions in September 2021. The states of Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat & Haryana registered a net 9+ lakh net subscribers accounting for 61% of the net payroll addition. The payroll data will always be provisional as the numbers change on a daily basis due to new additions & closing of PF accounts.

At present, the EPFO as a retirement fund management organization has more than 6 crore members with a total fund of more than ₹12 lakh crores.