EPFO: The Employees’ Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) is actively working on plans to recover unclaimed funds from dormant accounts. The EPFO will automatically transfer the funds of account holders who have been inactive for a long time into their accounts without requiring any additional steps.
In fact, the EPFO is creating an auto-settlement feature that will allow unclaimed money sitting in inactive accounts for years to be directly deposited into the customers’ bank accounts. With this new auto-settlement feature, account holders won’t need to submit any paper claims; they will receive the unclaimed funds directly in their bank accounts without having to file a claim.
How much money does EPFO have?
The primary goal of the auto-settlement feature being introduced by the EPFO is to settle around 81 lakh Aadhaar-verified accounts that have been deactivated, amounting to Rs 5,200 crore. Among these, about 14,000 accounts have balances exceeding Rs 5 lakh. Additionally, 38,000 Aadhaar-verified inactive accounts have amounts between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 5 lakh, while 41,000 accounts hold balances ranging from Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh.
The Central Board of Trustees (CBT) has sanctioned the automatic settlement of accounts with balances of Rs 1,000 or less in the initial phase. As per official statistics, by February 2026, the EPFO had a total of 31.8 lakh such inactive accounts, with a substantial sum of Rs 10,181 crore remaining unclaimed.
Who will benefit the most?
The primary beneficiaries of the auto-settlement feature will be account holders who have retired or those whose accounts have remained unclaimed for an extended period, even though they are linked to Aadhaar.
Which accounts are deactivated by EPFO?
EPFO deactivates accounts that cease to earn interest. This mainly affects members who retire after the age of 55 and have not made any contributions for three years. However, members under 55 continue to earn interest until they turn 58.