Overview

• Thirteen partial-withdrawal provisions were merged into three categories—Essential Needs, Housing and Special Circumstances—with the minimum service set at 12 months and withdrawals for education and marriage permitted up to 10 and 5 times, respectively.
• EPFO 3.0 was cleared to deliver faster, automated claims, multilingual self-service and payroll-linked contributions, and an MoU with India Post Payments Bank will provide doorstep Digital Life Certificates to EPS-1995 pensioners at EPFO’s expense.
• The window for premature final EPF settlement was extended to 12 months and final pension withdrawal to 36 months to support corpus preservation.
• The Vishwas Scheme will rationalise penal damages on delayed PF remittances to a flat 1% per month, with graded lower rates for short defaults, for six months extendable by six, covering ongoing and pending cases.
• Four managers—SBI Funds Management, HDFC AMC, Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC and UTI AMC—were appointed to run the debt portfolio for five years, and a committee will examine RBI’s investment recommendations as reported CRISIL draft benchmarks await review.