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Transfer and withdrawal of funds would be made simpler and faster from July 1, as the Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has set in motion a system to streamline the process. While transfer of funds of subscribers from one organisation to another now takes months and not the 30 days it is supposed to, the new target the EPFO is trying to set for itself is 15 days.

Once the new process is in force from July 1, subscribers are supposed to be in a position to apply for transfer or withdrawal with the click of a button and also to monitor and track the speed of the process, which would be expected to be completed in a given deadline. At present, the deadline is 30 days but data with EPFO shows that in 201112, just 54 per cent of transfer applications and 59 per cent of withdrawal applications were processed in 30 days.

Under the present system, the subscriber applies for transfer of funds to another organisation at his old office. The steps involved in a transfer are: Verification of the member at both ends, transfer of money from old office to new office and transfer of service details from old office to new office. This procedure of cross- verifications leads to delays, feels EPFO.

The new system, set in motion from April 1, involves a centralised system which works as a clearing house, that receives the employee's transfer claim from the new employer. The clearing house then sends the data of the member to the old office for verification and receives the verified data almost promptly.

The clearing house generates net credit and debit advice for each subscriber organisation at the end of each day. In other words, the member makes his transfer application at his new or old office or directly to the EPFO through an online application. The process is then taken over by the EPFO, which gets data verification from both offices and gets the transfer done immediately. Now, EPFO would do the work of getting details from both old and new offices where transfer is involved, says EPFO Commissioner Anil Swarup.

"EPFO has got a bad name for withdrawal and transfer. With web- based applications, we would centrally monitor each application and ensure it is completed within the decided time," he says. " We already have data of subscribers online. All we need is to link the data to processes. We want to operate it like a bank, which transfers funds to an account holder's different accounts without any hassle or delay. It should be that fast." Adding: " Employees resort to mostly withdrawals today because transfers are so difficult and cumbersome. So, once we make transfers easy, withdrawals would come down."