It seems that many of salaried employees think of Provident Fund (PF) as a black hole that sucks up their hard-earned money. Economic Times reported that 4000 Crore Rs is lying with EPFO in its unclaimed deposit accounts with no takers.
One of the deterrent for claiming the PF account money (withdrawal or transfer) is the complicated process and bureaucracy involved. Also frequent job changes (sometimes 3-4 times a year) by employees also contributes to unclaimed deposit accounts. On top of that the PF rules are not very customer-friendly.
The introduction of on-line PF Balance inquiry is a positive step in making the process easy. The process involves visiting the following web-site to know your PF balance :
http://www.epfindia.com/MembBal.html [You will need the PF Account Number]
And thankfully this service is free of charge. The catch is that the data is available only for certain cities and that too up-to certain date only. So for example in case of Bangalore the data is available till 08.11.11 but say for Agra the data is till 06.09.11. The complete list can be found here. Also very few cities are included as of now. As an example in Karnataka, data is available only for the following cities:
In most cases the PF number is something like KN/XXXXX/YYYYYY, so when you visit the webpage you will find that it asks you for Establishment Code (Max 7 digits), Extension (Max 3 characters) and Account Number (Max 7 Digits). In most cases you need to keep the middle box [Extension] empty. So fill the “XXXXX” in the first box, keep second box empty and fill the “YYYYYY” in the last box. You need to fill up the Name, Mobile number and accept before submitting. You will then receive an SMS on your mobile number with you balance.
Note that sometimes if you do this process in non-working hours, you may not receive the SMS immediately, so try during working hours. The SMS contains the details of PF balance as EE and ER amount. The EE = Employee Contribution while the ER = Employer Contribution. The SMS will also indicate the date up to which the balance is shown.
Another good service is the Claim Status. If you have applied for PF Withdrawal or Transfer you can check the application status on this website”:
http://www.epfindia.com/ClaimStatus_New.html [You will need the PF Account Number]
But if your company runs its own PF Trust – [my company does], then you may not find this data on the EPFO web-site yet. The current data is mostly for the Regional PF accounts.
I would actually like to see following services on the EPFO website:
Consolidated Statement for every individual across India
Service to apply for any correction in details
Online PF Transfer Application Process [Select Input PF Number, Output PF Number and an identification]
Online PF Withdrawal Process with money getting credited to bank account
What services you would like to see online for Provident Fund?
