On October 16, 2014, EPFO launched a Universal Account Number (UAN) driven Member Portal which will provide a number of features to all the employees covered under EPF. It will enable provident fund portability for all your EPF accounts of an employee.
What is UAN?
UAN or Universal Account Number is a unique number generated by EPFO for each employee. This number will act as an umbrella for multiple EPF accounts thus acting as a single window for employee for all his/her EPF accounts. Till now, whenever an employee switches job from one employer to another, each time a new account gets opened. The member has to apply for withdrawal or shift of his previous account balance to new account. With UAN, all these account will be linked. It is something like a Customer id number allocated by a bank to each individual which links his or her multiple accounts within a bank.
To get an UAN, following is required
- Your EPF account should be with the ECR w.e.f. Jan 2014 onwards.
- An employee needs to obtain UAN no. and member id from employer.
- You need to activate your registration and create your user id and password
- EPFO should have scanned copies of your KYC documents
- If you already have a UAN number and switching your job, you need to provide your UAN number to your new employer.
Benefits of UAN
- This will help an employee who is a member of EPFO to view details of all his/her EPF accounts through a single window.
- The KYC details with EPFO will be tagged against UAN and will eliminate the dependency on the employer and improve the quality of service.
- It will ease the process of switching EPF account which changing jobs.
How to get a UAN
UAN will be provided by your current employer, who in turn get it from the EPFO. So you need to approach your employer for the same. However, you may also check the UAN Status online through EPFO portal. As and when employer provide your UAN number, you need to Activate your UAN and link your account with the single user id.
It is a big step in the way of e-governance and all employees should take benefits of the same.
KYC Requirement
The EPFO Department will seek the KYC documents for all the employees. It is required to be scanned and upload onto the EPFO portal. These KYC documents may be uploaded either individually or as a bulk upload from employer side. The proof required for this may be from the following list
- National Population Register
- AADHAR
- Permanent Account Number
- Bank Account Number
- Passport
- Driving License
- Election Card
- Ration Card
The very purpose of listing Member ID allotted to single member under single Universal Account Number. This will help the member to view details of all the Member Identification Numbers (Member Id) and further enable to check the eligibility for online transfer claim through the options ‘List Previous Member ID’ and ‘View Status’ from the Menu ‘Previous Member ID’. AS per EPFO, in future there is no need to list the member ids as it will be linked automatically on the basis of Form-11 information. Member needs to disclose his/her UAN/Previous Member ID to the new employer through Form-11.
