The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) is in the process of appointing an actuary firm for the purpose of providing consultancy services to it on matters related to insurance and staff pension cum gratuity.
The statutory body under the Ministry of Labour & Employment had issued a request for proposal (RFP) to appoint an actuary or an actuarial firm to carry out the annual valuation of the Employees Deposit Linked Insurance (EDLI) scheme fund, valuation and projection exercise of the Employee Pension Fund (EPF) staff pension cum gratuity scheme, leave encashment and any other scheme for EPFO employees that may be applicable or introduced during the tenure.
The proposal to elicit response from the interested actuarial firms was issued on Friday and the process is slated to commence by August 17. The approved consultant will be empanelled with the EPFO headquarters in New Delhi for a tenure of one year.
“The appointed actuary will also make projections of the impact of various amendments in the Employees Deposit Linked Insurance (EDLI)- 76 Scheme like changing the criteria of giving benefits to the family members/nominees/dependents of an EDLI member from ‘death while in service (i.e. an employee who is a member)’ to ‘death as an EPF Member (i.e. an EPF Member who has not withdrawn his EPF accumulations)”, the proposal further notes.
Earlier last year, EPFO had also issued an RFP to appoint an actuarial consultant to study the Employee Pension Scheme (EPS)-1995 and suggest measures to enhance the benefits under the scheme keeping the sustainability of the scheme intact, especially the impact of November 4 Supreme Court judgement on higher pension under the EPS.
The apex court had upheld the 2014 amendment to EPS, which caps the basic salary of an employee at Rs 15,000 a month for the pension component derived from it to be calculated. However, it invalidated the other amendment of an additional contribution of 1.16 per cent by employees.
The EPFO is one of the largest social security organisations in the world with nearly 69 million active contributory members in close to 690,000 establishments across India. In March this year, the total corpus of the organisation stood at over Rs 21.36 trillion and the membership of the EDLI scheme stood at approximately 28 crores.
First Published: Aug 06 2023 | 1:39 PM IST