Bhupender Yadav, Union Minister of Labour and Employment
Bhupender Yadav, Union Minister of Labour and Employment | Photo Credit: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar 5331

The proposal to hike EPFO investment limit in equities to 20 per cent was dropped from the agenda of the Saturday meeting of Trustees of the Employees Provident Fund Organisation with employees’ representatives urging more deliberation.

At present, EPFO can invest 5 to 15 per cent of the investible deposits in equity or equity-related schemes.

The proposal to revise the limit to 20 per cent was vetted and approved by the EPFO advisory body Finance Audit and Investment Committee (FAIC).

Facial authentication

At Saturday’s meeting the EPFO launched a facility to allow its over 73 lakh pensioners to submit digital life certificate from anywhere using the face authentication technology. This will help aged pensioners facing difficulties in getting their bio-metrics (fingerprint and iris) captured.

Union Minister of Labour and Employment Bhupender Yadav, who also chairs EPFO’s apex decision-making body the Central Board of Trustees, launched the face authentication technology, a Labour Ministry statement said.

Centralised disbursal

Earlier in the day, the CBT, at its 231st meeting, gave in-principle approval for centralised disbursal of pension to further improve EPFO services for pensioners.

Yadav also launched a pension and employees deposit linked insurance scheme calculator providing online facility to pensioner and family members to calculate the benefits under Pension and Death Linked Insurance Benefit for which they are eligible.

The Minister also released the training policy of EPFO Under the training policy, 14,000 personnel will be trained annually for eight days and the total budget will be three per cent of the salary budget.

New Custodian

The CBT approved the recommendation of the selection committee for appointment of CITI Bank as Custodian of securities of EPFO for three years.

The proposal for the extension of the tenure of the present Custodian, Standard Chartered Bank, till new the Custodian takes over was ratified.

Further, the proposal for the extension of tenure of ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) manufacturer of SBI MF and UTI MFwas ratified.

The Board ratified the extension of the tenure of the present External Concurrent Auditor, which expired on March 31, 2022, till the new External Concurrent Auditor takes charge.

At present, EPFO can invest 5 to 15 per cent of the investible deposits in equity or equity-related schemes.

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