Banking on your provident fund savings for critical contingencies will now become far simpler with the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) introducing a single page composite form for such withdrawals before retirement age.
Over eight crore Employees’ Provident Fund account holders will no longer be required to submit evidential documents for withdrawing PF for availing housing loans, grant of advances in case of factory closure, marriage, higher education of children, among other things.
Till now, employees were required to fill and submit three different forms to EPFO for withdrawing provident fund for various purposes. “To add convenience, these forms have now been further simplified and replaced with a single page composite claim form,” EPFO said.
The EPFO has introduced forms in two categories – one, for those whose Aadhaar number is seeded with Universal Account Number (UAN) – a common number for all PF accounts, and the other for those without an Aadhaar number. Employees whose Aadhaar number is seeded will not be required to get employer’s attestation for withdrawing PF but employees without the seeded Aadhaar number will need the employer’s approval on their forms before submitting it to the EPFO.
Further, a single form signed by the employee will be treated as ‘self-certification’ instead of the present requirement of submitting various documents. However, in case PF is being withdrawn for medical purposes, a doctor’s certificate will still be required.
