The Employees provident Fund Organisation has signed agreements with five banks out of which four are private and one is Bank of Baroda. The four private banks are: ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank.
The agreement has been signed to speed up the process of collection of PF dues from employers and to make payments to the subscribers.
EPFO has signed this kind of contract for the first time where majority of private banks are included. Earlier the organization was using state run banks to provide such services.
The department had also tied up with State Bank of India (SBI), Punjab National Bank, Allahabad Bank, Indian Bank and Union Bank of India in the past. Now the EPFO department has total 10 banks to perform all the transactions related to employers and employees, so we can expect that work will be done with more speed.
All the five banks will be providing the services at zero transaction fees. So, it is estimated that it will save almost 300 crore annually for the department.