Benefits available in EPF
A small part of your salary, i.e., 12% of your basic salary is invested in Employee Provident Fund and an equal amount is matched by your employer each month.
One can get pension under EPF
The EPF part is actually for your provident fund and EPS is for your pension. The 12% contribution made by you from your salary goes into your EPF fully, but the 12% contribution which your employer makes, out of that 8.33% actually goes in EPS and the rest goes into EPF. However, conditions to avail these benefits are given below:
One is entitled for pension only if one has completed the age of 58.
One is entitled for pension only if he has completed 10 yrs of service (in case of more than one companies, the EPF should have been transferred, not withdrawn)
The maximum Pension per month is subject to maximum of Rs 3,250 per month
Lifelong pension is available to the member and upon his death members of the family are entitled for the pension.
No interest is given on EPS (pension part)
The compound interest is provided only on EPF part. The EPS part (8.33% out of 12% contribution from your employer does not get any interest. At the time of PF withdrawal, you get both EPF and EPS.
You might not get 100% of your Provident Fund money
You always get 100% of your EPF part, but for EPS there is separate rule. There is something called Table ‘D’ , under which its mentioned how much you get at the time of exit from your job, there is a slab for each completed year and you get “n” times of your last drawn salary (depending on the completed year of service).
Voluntary Provident Fund: You can invest more in Provident Fund
You can always invest more than 12% of your basic salary in Employee Provident Fund which is called voluntary provident fund. In this case the excess amount will be invested in PF and you will keep on getting the interest, but the employer is not supposed to match your contribution. He will just invest upto maximum of 12% of your basic, not more than that.
Withdrawing of EPF amount at job change is illegal
You can only withdraw your Employee provident fund money, only if you have no job at the time of withdrawing your money and if 2 months have passed.
Only transfer is allowed in case you get a new job and you switch to it. While there are no cases where EPF office tracks these things and takes up this matter, still just for your information you should know that if you got a new job and took it and then you are applying for withdrawal, its illegal as per law.
However in case of EPS, if the service period is less than 10 years, you’ve option to either withdraw your corpus or get it transferred by obtaining a ‘Scheme Certificate’. Once, the service period crosses 10 years, the withdrawal option ceases.
Just for your information, you can withdraw your EPF money without the help of past employer signature by attesting your withdrawal form by a bank manager or some gazzeted officer.
Your EPF gives you some life insurance too
This is because there is something called Employees’ Deposit Linked Insurance (EDLI) scheme and your organisation has to contribute 0.5% of your monthly basic pay, as premium for your life cover. However companies which already have life insurance benefits to employees as part of the company, are exempted from this EDLI scheme.