Blitz Bureau
THE Labour Ministry will switch to a centralised pension payment system from 2025, allowing retirees to receive their monthly pensions from any bank branch, anywhere in the country.
A large-scale test run for the system was recently conducted to ensure smooth implementation. During the trial run on October 29-30, the EPFO successfully disbursed pensions across 49,000 accounts using an upgraded IT-based financial platform.
The new platform, designed for subscribers of the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO)— the state-run retirement fund—aims to streamline the process by reducing paperwork and enabling faster processing, said Labour Minister Mansukh Mandaviya .
This tech-based system will remove the need to physically transfer payment orders when pensioners change banks or move to a new location. Instead, pension payments can be accessed seamlessly, regardless of the beneficiary’s bank or location.
This initiative will benefit around 7.8 million subscribers of the Employees’ Pension Scheme 1995, a scheme that combines defined contributions and defined benefits and is available to employees earning up to Rs15,000 per month.
The centralised platform will unify pension disbursement. Under the new system, fresh retirees will no longer need to visit a particular bank branch for verification to activate their pension accounts, which will expedite payment transfers.
