PF Rule Change: No Need To Transfer EPFO Account While Changing Jobs

New Delhi: Soon, there will be no need for employees to transfer money in provident funds when changing jobs.

The Employees Provident Fund Organisation or the EPFO recently gave a green signal to the development of centralised IT-enabled systems. This decision was taken at the 229th meeting of the Central Board of Trustees (CBT), the apex decision-making body of EPFO.

After the move to the development of the systems by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing or C-DAC, an employee’s provident fund number will remain the same even if they change their jobs. This means that they will not have to worry about transferring the accounts.

The meeting, held on November 20, was chaired by the Union labour minister of state Bhupender Yadav. “Post this, the field functionalities will move on a central database in a phased manner enabling smoother operations and enhanced service delivery. The centralised system will facilitate de‐duplication and merger of all PF accounts of any member. It will remove the requirement of transfer of account on change of job,” said a statement by the government.

The retirement fund organisation has also made the decision of giving more power to its advisory body Finance Investment and Audit Committee (FIAC) in terms of taking a call on the investment in new asset classes.

“At present, we have decided to invest in only newly added government instruments (bonds and InvITs). There is no percentage for that. It will be decided on a case to case basis by FIAC,” Yadav was quoted as saying after the meeting.