How to claim EPF, pension and EDLI insurance after a death

The Universal Account Number is the key to everything here. It appears on salary slips, on the EPF passbook and in the member's EPFO login. One UAN can hold several member IDs across employers.

Check whether previous employments were transferred into the current UAN or left behind as separate accounts. Untransferred old accounts are a common source of forgotten money and have to be claimed too.

Check that the nomination on record is current, and note who it names — for PF and for pension the rules differ. One trap catches many families: a nomination made before the member acquired a "family" becomes invalid once they have one, and pension benefits then go to the spouse and children regardless of who was named. An old nomination naming a parent or sibling may simply not apply.

Where there is no valid nomination, the provident fund is payable to the members of the family in equal shares; only if there is no eligible family member does it pass to whoever is legally entitled.

The accumulated balance — the member's contributions, the employer's share and the interest — is paid to the nominee, or where there is no nomination to the family as defined by the scheme.

EPFO has issued a single Composite Claim Form (Death) which replaces the three older forms — Form 20 for the provident fund, Form 10D for pension and Form 5IF for the EDLI insurance — and it comes in Aadhaar and non-Aadhaar versions. Ask for the composite form first; the three separate numbers still exist and you may be handed those instead, so it is worth knowing what each covers.

Whichever route the office uses, check that all three entitlements are being claimed and not just the provident fund. EPFO publishes a 'Know Which Claim Form to Submit' page setting out the combination for each situation.

Claims are filed either online through the member portal or physically through the last employer or the regional EPFO office. Where the member's Aadhaar was validated against the UAN and the bank and mobile KYC were seeded, the claim can be filed online and moves markedly faster. Note that seeding the bank account itself needs the employer's approval, so an unseeded account still means going through the employer.

The claimant's bank account must be in the claimant's own name and seeded correctly, or the claim will be returned.

Under the pension scheme a surviving spouse is generally entitled to a monthly pension for life. On top of that, each child receives a children's pension equal to 25 per cent of the widow's pension, payable until the child turns 25 — for a maximum of two children at a time, so a third child begins receiving it as an older one ages out.

Where there is no surviving spouse, or the widow's pension is not payable, the children are entitled to an orphan pension of 75 per cent of the widow's pension instead — a materially larger amount, and one families often do not know exists. The member's marital status is irrelevant to a child's entitlement if the child is under 25.

The pension is claimed on Form 10D — a separate form from the provident fund claim, and the one that takes longest to start paying. File it at the same time as Form 20 rather than afterwards.

Pension continues to the spouse for life and does not stop when the PF balance is paid out — these are independent entitlements.

The Employees' Deposit Linked Insurance scheme pays a lump sum to the nominee or family when a member dies while in service. No premium was ever deducted from the employee for it and no separate policy exists — the entitlement arises from EPF membership itself.

It is claimed on Form 5IF, usually submitted together with Form 20, and generally requires the employer to certify that the member was in service on the date of death.

The amount is not small. Since 15 February 2018 the benefit has been at least ₹2,50,000, and the maximum was raised from ₹6 lakh to ₹7,00,000 with effect from 28 April 2021. It is computed from the average balance of the last twelve months of PF contributions, so the exact figure depends on the member's wages. EPFO publishes an EDLI calculator.

Ask for it explicitly: it is not paid automatically alongside the PF settlement, and no premium was ever deducted for it.

Track the claim through the EPFO member portal or the regional office. If it stalls, the EPFO grievance system and the regional Provident Fund Commissioner are the escalation routes, and both are used regularly.

Keep the acknowledgement for each of the three claims separately, because they progress at different speeds and get lost independently.