New Delhi: The Employees’ Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) is soon going to launch a facility that will allow members to identify, track, activate and link their old provident fund accounts with the existing Universal Account Number (UAN), labor minister Mansukh Mandaviya told reporters Wednesday. The facility will be useful for a large number of people who started working in the pre-UAN era and are unable to provide a complete chain of their work history while filing claims with the retirement fund body as they may have worked with multiple employers during the period.Introduced in 2014, the 12-digit UAN acts as an umbrella for all the member IDs from different employers, allowing a member to manage all the provident fund related contributions under one single number throughout their career, thus simplifying tracking, transfers, and online access to their PF.“The E-PRAAPTI portal (EPF Aadhaar-Based Access Portal for Tracking Inoperative Accounts) will provide a streamlined Aadhaar based authentication mechanism that will enable members to securely access their old EPF account which may not have an UAN linked with it and initiate the process for updating their member profile, followed by seamless UAN linking and activation,” Mandaviya said.Earlier, TOI had reported that EPFO was planning to deploy new age technologies to validate past service records, helping authenticate damaged or missing records which will enable merging of multiple accounts, and facilitate settlement of inoperative EPF accounts with minimal manual intervention.In the initial phase, the portal will be helpful for workers who are able to recall their member IDs. “Going forward it is contemplated to expand the scope of E-PRAAPTI to include members who may not be able to recall or access their old IDs as well,” Mandaviya said.Latest govt data available shows that the total number of allotted UANs stood at 20.3 crore at the end of FY24, while the total number of member accounts stand well over 30 crore. Of them, nearly 7.3 crore UANs are actively contributing to the retirement fund body.Besides, Mandaviya also said that EPFO settled 8.3 crore claims, of which 5.5 crore claims were advance or partial withdrawals in 2025-26, revealing the ease of access to PF accounts, enabling members to draw upon their savings to meet their needs.
