Kamal Ghorui
NEW DELHI: The Employees Provident Fund Organisation is focusing on getting subscribers to withdraw unclaimed money lying in inoperative accounts.Nearly a quarter of the inoperative accounts, which are Aadhaar verified, may soon get cleared of the idle balances as the EPFO is working to develop an auto-settlement facility which will allow account holders to receive the unclaimed money in their bank accounts without filing for claims, an official told TOI. The facility is slated to deal with nearly 8.1 lakh Aadhaar verified inoperative accounts, amounting to Rs 5,200 crore, of which nearly 14,000 have more than Rs 5 lakh lying unclaimed. Another 38,000 Aadhaar-verified inoperative accounts have Rs 1-5 lakh lying unclaimed, and 41,000 accounts have between Rs 50,000 and Rs 1 lakh. “In the last meeting, the central board of trustees (CBT) cleared auto-settlement of such inoperative accounts, with an unclaimed balance of Rs 1,000 or less, to registered bank accounts. Based on the learnings from this project, a separate initiative is planned to design a strategy for other accounts. Members who joined after Oct 2017 will be given priority,” the official said. An inoperative account in EPFO is one that has stopped earning interest and mainly belongs to members who have retired after 55 years of age and no contribution is made for three years. However, for those under 55 years, the account will keep earning interest until the subscriber turns 58. As of Feb 2026, there were 31.8 lakh inoperative accounts, with Rs 10,181 crore lying unclaimed. Of these, nearly 7 lakh accounts are older than 20 years, while 1.8 lakh are between 10-20 years old. Nearly 13 lakh inoperative accounts are between 5-10 years old.
