A 12-digit Universal Account Number or UAN is necessary to avail the benefits of Employee Provident Fund (EPF). Under this scheme, a portion is deducted from the employee’s salary every month and an equal amount of money is contributed by the employer towards the EPF account. The employee is entitled to receive the accumulated amount with interest at the time of retirement or two months after the termination of his/her job.
However, multiple job changes typically result in multiple EPF accounts being opened, one with each employer. With the introduction of UAN, it has become possible to consolidate multiple EPF accounts into a single account for each member of Employee Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO). Read more to know about the process of your UAN activation and how you can link multiple PF accounts under a single UAN.
How to Check and Activate your UAN?
Normally, in case of your first job, your employer will notify you about your Universal Account Number. However, if for some reason you don’t have a record of it, you can get your UAN number specified in your salary slips if your employer deducts your salary towards PF contributions. Else, you can log on to the UAN portal and use your Aadhaar card to find out the UAN allotted to you.
To activate the UAN, you need to visit the official online portal and click on the ‘Activate UAN’ tab. Then you need to generate an authorisation PIN by entering your UAN, name, date of birth and mobile number. The UAN gets activated once this pin is entered and authenticated.
How many EPF Accounts can be Linked with a UAN?
As part of its ‘one employee one EPF’ initiative, the EPFO has recently introduced a new facility for its members, using which you can merge up to 10 accounts of Employee Provident Fund accounts into your universal account number or UAN. This facility will help employees who change their jobs frequently and forget to transfer their PF account with the old employer to the new one or withdraw it.
How to Link Multiple EPF Accounts with your UAN?
In order to add more than one provident fund account to your UAN, you need to visit the EPFO website and follow the steps given below:
-Go to the main menu and click on ‘Our Services’ tab to access for employee services. It will redirect you to a new page with services listed under ‘For Employees’ category.
-Click on ‘One Employee – One EPF Account’ listed under the services section on ‘For Employee’ page
-A form to consolidate multiple EPF accounts will be opened. You need to enter your registered mobile number, UAN, and the current member ID to generate an OTP
-After entering the OTP, the page for entering old PF accounts for merger will be displayed. Enter the old PF account number, accept the declaration and submit the request.
-The request for the merger of your previous PF accounts with the current account will be sent to EPFO
Note that this facility to add your previous PF accounts to the UAN is available only after 3 days post the activation of your UAN. Also, you should have your KYC and Aadhaar details updated and registered with EPFO to avail these benefits.
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