UAN activation generation no more available on EPFO website:PF claim settlement process may get longer for 2 weeks

The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has restarted its Unified Member Portal after a scheduled upgrade that lasted about a week. After this major software and database upgrade, the entire interface of the portal has changed. Along with this, EPFO has made several changes to its member services, which will completely change the way PF account holders perform some essential tasks. UAN will not be activated from EPFO website After this new upgrade, the facility to activate UAN and directly generate new UAN from the EPFO portal has been discontinued. Now both these services have been completely shifted to the government’s UMANG app. Apart from this, Aadhaar-based face authentication has also been made mandatory to strengthen security. EPFO says that this change will make online services more secure, faster and reliable. What changed on the PF portal? These are the 5 main points: The changes that have occurred for EPFO subscribers after the software upgrade are as follows: Now UAN will be activated from UMANG app If you are a new employee or your UAN is not activated, then now you will not be able to do it from the EPFO website. For this, you will have to take help of the Umang app: Method to generate new UAN number has also changed If an employee needs to generate a new UAN number, they will also have to use the Umang app only. Umang (Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance) is the Government of India’s digital services platform, where services of many government departments including EPFO are available. Process to create new UAN What to do if you have a PF account but no UAN? Employees who already have an EPF account but have not yet been allotted a UAN can also get a new number. For this, they will need to verify their registered mobile number and provide member details. Once verification is complete, a new UAN will be generated, which will be linked to their existing PF account. If you have forgotten your UAN, you can easily get it from the portal: If a subscriber has forgotten their UAN number, finding it on the upgraded new portal is now easy. For this, the user will have to enter their registered mobile number, upload the required ID or address proof, and verify the OTP received on the mobile. After this, the UAN will appear on the screen. Death claim facility will still remain available on the portal Despite shifting UAN-related services to the UMANG app, EPFO has retained the online facility for filing ‘Death Claim’ (withdrawal of money upon member’s death) on its Unified Member Portal itself. The nominee or beneficiary making the claim must have these things: Note: EPFO has clarified that all documents should be in PDF format. Each file size should be less than 2 MB and there should be no ‘space’ in the file name. Why were these changes made and what problems may arise? According to EPFO, this upgrade has been done to strengthen the database and modernize the software so that people can get better service. However, the organisation has also stated that during the initial two-week stabilization period (system settling time), online requests and claim settlements may take slightly longer than usual, as additional verification and validation checks are currently being conducted. Members have been advised to avoid logging in repeatedly during peak hours (high traffic times) or submitting the same request multiple times.