New Delhi, Feb 6 (IANS): The Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) said on Thursday that a record over 5 crore claims have been settled so far in the financial year (FY) 2024-25.

This is the largest number of claims settled by a government agency so far.

"5.08 crore claims were settled in FY 2024-25, and a total of Rs 2.05 lakh crore has been paid. In the last financial year, 4.45 crore claims were settled, and Rs 1.82 lakh crore was paid," the EPFO said.

The reason for the EPFO ??settling record claims in the current financial year is the implementation of reforms and simplification of the process.

The extent and category of automatic claim settlement have increased by EPFO. Under automatic claim settlement, payment is made within three days. The number of such claims has doubled to 1.87 crore in this financial year, against 89.52 lakh in the financial year 2023-24.

Apart from this, the EPFO has given the facility of profile self-correction to members. The Provident Fund (PF) transfer process is also made easier and now requires less approval from the employer.

By simplifying the PF transfer process, now 48 per cent of the claims are sent directly to the EPFO ??without the approval of the employer. 44 per cent of PF transfers are being done through an automatic system. Employer's permission is required only in 8 per cent of the cases.

The EPFO is ??providing the facility of profile self-correction to the members; 97.18 per cent of the connections are being approved by the member himself. Employer's permission is required only in one per cent of the cases. Approval of the EPFO ??officials is required only in 0.4 per cent of the cases.

According to the EPFO, there has been a huge decline in the rejected claims, and only 0.21 per cent of the claims are being rejected.