EPF falls under the Employees’ Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952. The utility of the PF fund is discernible at the time of retirement. There are other auxiliary benefits that an employee can reap from his PF fund.
The importance of the PF fund is beyond comparison. Waiting for annual PF account slips can take forever, and it has now become a thing of the yesteryears. With the vital advancements brought forth by the EPFO, the more than five crore subscribers can now easily have a look at their PF fund in real-time.
Let us look at the steps that come in handy when checking the available PF fund in your EPF account in less than 10 minutes.
Step 1: You have to know your EPFO account number. Else you will not be able to access your EPF account. The EPF account number will be available on your payslip.
Step 2: Visit the EPFO website and then click on the link given here: http://www.epfindia.gov.in/. It will take you to the page through which you can have a detailed look at your EPF account.
Step 3: You have to select the state where the PF office is located.
Step 4: You have to click on the appropriate EPF regional office, don’t run around like a headless chicken. The PF number you will get is an alpha-numeric number in which the first two letters represent the regional office. For example, if your PF number is DL/12345/6789, DL is your regional office code.
Step 5: You will find an online form that you have to fill up. Please insert your name as it is in your payslip, then enter your mobile number along with your PF number. Then the boxes will appear where you have to insert seven digits. So, in the example, as mentioned earlier: DL/12345/6789, you see only five numbers, 12345. You will enter 00 in the first two boxes. You have to enter the establishment code in the following three boxes or don’t fill anything if you don’t have an establishment code. Finally, enter the account number, i.e. 6789, and hit the submit button in the remaining boxes.
After following these five steps, you will get an SMS to your registered mobile within ten minutes maximum. There, you will be able to check your available PF fund if the EPFO office has your records updated. In case the documents are not in place, you might have to look at “no data found”. If that is the case, then hurry up, do not waste time procrastinating, reach out to your employer and report the problem you are facing.
Where to invest your parked capital?
There are myriad benefits of the PF fund. Here we have discussed a few for you so that you can think it through and invest judiciously.
- You can take a loan against your PF fund. Did you know it? In case of a financial emergency, if you have a PF fund account, then you are eligible to get a loan on your PF balance at a very nominal interest rate. However, once the loan has been disbursed, you are liable to repay the loan within three years. It efficiently answers your eternal question of “where to invest?”
- The PF account holder is eligible to get free insurance of 7 lakhs in case of their death while still in the service. Under the EDLI scheme, that PF account holder does not have to pay a single penny on the insurance premium. So, now you know where to invest when it comes to getting insured for life.
- In case of any medical exigency, you will be able to withdraw some amount of your PF fund, but some terms and conditions apply.
Investing in a PF fund is a brilliant way to ensure that you are secured in more than one way. Hence, it is wise to use your surplus amount in a PF fund to support you in the hours of need.
Also, Read This: How to Check PF Balance Online on Mobile, Call, SMS, UAN, Umang App