In the corporate world, one comes across a lot of unfamiliar terms like Universal account number (UAN), Employee Provident Fund (EPF) and National Pension Scheme (NPS), especially when stepping into their careers. Irrespective of what your job profile is you will have to deal with these if you are drawing a salary from a company registered in India. There are several key steps involved like UAN activation and registration ensure your Provident Fund (PF) gets handled well. In this post, we try to guide you through the steps involved in accessing your UAN account.
I recently joined my first-ever full-time job and received my first-month pay (how exciting!). As I received the bank notification, I see that the salary is lower than what I had been calculating since last one month. I assumed that it must be the “Income Tax” I need to pay to the government out of my hard earned money. But when I saw my payslip, a couple of days later, I realized an amount was deducted towards Provident Fund.
Coming from a non-finance background and a business family, I had no idea what a Provident Fund was and why was my salary being deducted towards it. So if you are so my Mate, then here I have given details of all things to know about Provident Fund and how to keep track of that money.
Provident Fund is a savings scheme wherein you and your employer contribute a fixed percentage of basic salary every month to build a retirement corpus. The Government of India runs an organization called Employee’s Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) which collects the Provident Fund contributions and pays 8.7% tax-free interest on these contributions annually. Now, there are other Company specific Provident Fund trusts as well, those are privately managed and specific to each employee.
The new synonymous thing to PF is UAN.
- What is UAN?
- How do I get a UAN from EPFO website?
- How do I Activate a UAN on EPFO website?
- How do I login on EPFO website using UAN?
What is UAN?
UAN stands for Universal Account Number – a 12 digit unique identification number allocated to you by the EPFO on first-time registration and provided to your employer. With every change in job, you receive a now PF member ID which is linked to the same UAN ensuring your funds under one – Universal Account.
UAN was introduced to ease the entire PF management –no more transferring of PF balance between jobs, anytime balance inquiry, quick and easy withdrawals applications, online tracking of your claim status, etc. Basically, UAN is your key to all the online EPFO services
How do I register a UAN?
Your UAN is created as your employer creates your PF account with EPFA. So the best place to find out about your UAN is your Human Resource department (employer). Alternatively, if in a scenario your HR doesn’t have your UAN, you can get it from the UAN portal by following the below steps:
Step 1. Visit UAN member portal. You can click here to access the same (https://unifiedportal-mem.epfindia.gov.in/memberinterface/)
Step 2. On the bottom right-hand corner look for “know your UAN status” and click on it (refer image below)
Step 3. The following Know your UAN screen that pops-up. Fill in your PF member ID, which has details of the state, office, your establishment ID, establishment extension and finally your member ID.
For example, let us break a sample PF member ID – DLCPM00412760000000XXX
DL – refers to state; CPM – EPFO office; 0041276 – establishment ID; 000 – Est Ext; 0000XXX – your 7 digit EPFO member ID
Enter the rest of the details like name, date of birth, mobile number, email ID and the Captcha. Ensure to enter/register your personal mobile number as all future alerts will be sent to the same number.
Once all the details are updated, click on “Get Authorization Pin”.
Step 4. Input the Authorization PIN received your mobile number and click on ‘Validate OTP and get UAN’
Result: You will receive your Universal Account Number on your registered mobile number.
How to go about UAN Activation?
Once you have you UAN, either from your employer or through UAN portal (as mentioned above), you need to activate the UAN to access various online EFPO services.
Here is how you can activate your Universal Account Number (UAN):
Step 1. Once again visit UAN member portal. You can click here to access the same – https://unifiedportalmem.epfindia.gov.in/memberinterface/
Step 2. On the bottom right hand corner look for “Activate UAN status” and click on it (refer image below)
Step 3. Fill in your UAN, name, date of birth, mobile number, email ID and the Captcha on the following Activate UAN screen that pops-up. Once all the details are filled in, click on “Get Authorization Pin”
Step 4. You will receive an Authorization PIN on your mobile, enter the same on the next pop-up screen, select on ‘I Agree’ under the Disclaimer checkbox and click on ‘Validate OTP and Activate UAN’. This is final step to activate your UAN.
Confirmation of UAN Activation – Upon activation of your UAN, you will receive a password on your registered mobile number – which is to be used to login your online UAN portal.
How do I login on EPFO website using UAN?
You need to activate your UAN (as described above under How do I activate UAN?) to be able to login on the EPFO member portal. Here are the steps to be followed to login on EPFO website:
Step 1. Once UAN is activated, visit UAN member portal. You can click here to access the same ( https://unifiedportal-mem.epfindia.gov.in/memberinterface/)
Step 2. Enter your activated 12-digit UAN (in the circled area on the EPFO member portal).
Step 3. Enter the password received on your registered mobile number post UAN activation.
Step 4. Click “sign-in” to access your UAN enabled EPFO online account and most likely you will see the below screenshot:
Step 5. Change your password by clicking to tab “Account” followed by “Change password”.
Result – You are now all set to access your UAN member portal and the various services the UAN member portal has to offer at your convenience.
To know more about the various services that UAN portal offers, NPS and its benefits – Stay tuned!
Note – This post has been compiled and written by Divya Sethia. Please feel free to add your queries in the comments section.
Ok ok