EPFO: 22.55 crore subscribers credited with interest of 8.50% for FY21

The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has credited an interest rate of 8.50 per cent in 22.55 crore subscribers for the financial year 2020-2021, the retirement fund body announced on Monday. 

“22.55 crore accounts have been credited with an interest of 8.50% for the FY 2020-21," EPFO said in a tweet.

The Finance Ministry had on 29 October announced that it had approved 8.5 per cent rate of interest of provident fund deposit for 2020-21 paving way for EPFO to credit the interest. This had come just ahead of Diwali, a good news for over five crore subscribers of EPFO.

The 8.5% of interest on provident fund deposits for the last financial year was decided by the EPFO's apex decision making body Central Board of Trustees (CBT) headed by Labour Minister in March this year.

The retirement fund regulatory body kept the EPF interest rate unchanged for FY 2020-21 as there was more withdrawal than deposits during the entire financial year.

After the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020, the EPFO had reduced PF interest rate in March 2020 to 8.5 per cent for FY 2019-20 — 7 years' low of EPF interest rate. For FY 2018-19, EPF interest rate was 8.65 per cent. For FY 2017-18, EPF interest rate being given to the EPFO subscribers was 8.55 per cent while for FY 2016-17, EPF interest rate given to EPF account holders was 8.65 per cent.

Here's how to check EPFO balance via SMS service:

EPFO account holders, whose UANs are registered with the retirement body, can get details of their most recent contributions and provident fund balance though an SMS.

- For this, send an SMS to 7738299899 with the text “EPFOHO UAN ENG". ‘ENG’ here denotes the first three letters of your language of preference, in this case English. If you want to get the SMS in Tamil, you can write ‘TAM’, ‘BEN’ for Bengali, ‘HIN’ for Hindi and so on. The service is available in 10 different languages.

- In this regard, you should also not forget to sync your UAN with your bank account, Aadhaar and PAN, as EPFO stores details of its members. You can also ask your employer to do the seeding for you.

How to check EPFO balance via Missed Call service:

- Subscribers can check their PF balance by giving a missed call to the number 011-22901406.

- For this, you have to call from your registered phone number.

- The details will be provided to you if you are registered on the UAN portal.