EPF accounts: EPFO introduces new rules to correct, update details in employees' accounts

EPF accounts: The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has introduced some new rules to correct, update employees' details in their Employees’ Provident Fund accounts. The employee body has issued new standard operating procedure (SOP) guidelines for correcting personal details.

As per an EPFO circular issued on July 31, 2024, “In suppression of earlier SOP, the Competent Authority has approved the SOP version 3.0 for joint declaration for member profile updation. In all cases of joint declaration requests, the Field Offices should do a stronger due diligence so that, cases of impersonation/ identity theft or otherwise do not occur.”

It noted that the purpose of this document is to delineate the procedure of receipt of Joint Declarations for the updation/insertion/correction in UAN profiles by the members and employer and the method of corrections to be followed by the Field Offices.

It further noted: "As the automated system is getting mature, the member data has started to throw a number of anomalies in profiles leading to rejections/failures/frauds. As a result, genuine members have to go through a long channel for corrections. The claims settlement also faces certain difficulties across all offices due to various reason related to data mismatch in parameters, namely, (1) Name, (2) Gender, (3) Date of Birth, (4) Father Name, (5) Mother Name, (6) Spouse Name, (7) Marital Status, (8) Date of Joining, (9) Reason of Leaving, (10) Date of Leaving, (11) Nationality, (12) Aadhaar Number."

The circular issued by EPFO has categorised profile changes into Major and Minor categories. According to the circular, all major and minor change correction requests must be supported by documentary proof. For minor changes, a minimum of two required documents must be submitted along with the joint declaration requests.

On the other hand, for major changes, a minimum of three required documents have to be provided. It is important to note that in the case of changes related to Aadhaar, either an Aadhaar card or an E-Aadhaar card linked with an active mobile number would suffice as a supporting document.

All minor and major corrections requests will have to be supported by documentary proof as prescribed in Annexure-I.
a) For Minor Changes, at least two documents are required from the list of documents attached in Annexure-I with relevant parameters of the change.
b) For Major Changes, at least three documents are required to be provided by the applicant from the list of documents attached in Annexure-I with respect to the relevant parameters in those changes, except in the case of the parameter “Aadhaar”, where Aadhaar Card/EAadhaar Card linked with active mobile phone, as indicated in Table-I of Annexure-I would be the only sufficient document.

 

How to submit a joint declaration request

The Employees' Provident Fund (EPF) members have the option to submit a joint declaration request for corrections through the Member e-Sewa portal. It is important to note that corrections can only be made to data related to EPF accounts managed by the current employer. Employers do not have the authority to make any changes to EPF accounts from previous or other establishments. Additionally, there are restrictions on the frequency of changes that can be made to personal details in the system.

The EPFO noted that member will be responsible for submitting the JD application from his unified portal login. All the requests will be time-stamped, and IP will be recorded.

All uploaded documents will be stored on the server for future reference.

Once the request is submitted then, it will reflect in the employer login. An email to this effect will also be automatically sent to the employers’ registered e-mail. Member can only get the data corrected for those member accounts which are generated by his present employer. No employer will have any
modification rights for member accounts belonging to other/previous establishments.

Employers will get the member modification request online from the member portal and also be informed through e-mail. Employer will check the veracity
of the documents uploaded by the member and then upload the required documents related to the said request