- By Aditya Pratap Singh
- Tue, 07 Apr 2026 10:59 AM (IST)
- Source:JND
EPFO auto settlement feature: Employees' Provident Fund Organisation introduced EPFO 3.0 initiative last year to modernise its digital framework, eliminating unnecessary hurdles in claim settlement and other common requests from depositors.
According to the government's reply to a question in the Lok Sabha, many proposed reforms, including auto claim settlement, the Centralised Pension Payment System (CPPS), and others, have become operative, while a few others are yet to be enacted.
The initiatives introduced under EPFO 3.0 are comprehensive measures aimed at a complete overhaul of the pension fund body's IT infrastructure and operational processes.
What Becomes Operational
Shobha Karandlaje, Minister of State for Labour and Employment, recently informed the Parliament that as of January 1, 2025, all EPFO offices had shifted to the CPPS. This accelerates pension delivery to nearly seven million beneficiaries.
The minister highlighted that advance withdrawal requests worth Rs 51,620 crore have been successfully resolved. Additionally, the auto settlement mechanism has picked up momentum as well, processing 3,52,20,199 claims for amounts up to Rs 5 Lakh till February 25, 2026.
The auto settlement threshold has also been increased to Rs 5 lakh from Rs 1 lakh, earlier, in June last year, reducing the settlement time significantly by drastically reducing the need for manual intervention.
As per the minister, the automation mechanism has also been integrated into account transfers. As of February 25, 2026, over seven million transfer claims were being completed without human intervention.
What Yet To Be Enacted
Introduced reforms like--EPF Withdrawal using UPI and ATM--are still pending for implementation.
EPFO has faced disruptions to its IT services for decades. To address this, the Central Board of Administration (CBA) has approved this reform plan, scheduled for implementation in 2025.
Once operational, these systems will streamline EPFO's services and significantly improve the user experience.
EPF Interest Rate
The Ministry of Labour had previously announced that, for the third consecutive year, the EPFO (Employee Pension Fund) would maintain its interest rates above 8 per cent, thus leaving employee pension fund deposit rates unchanged for 2025-2026.
In February of last year, the rate was set at 8.25 per cent for 2024-2025, which already represented a slight increase compared to the 8.15 per cent proposed for the 2022-2023 fiscal year.