NEW DELHI: Retirement fund body Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) made it mandatory for firms to provide their employees' bank account numbers with IFSC code of bank branch to facilitate allotment of universal PF account number and payment to its subscribers.

The EPFO headquarters has asked its over 120 field offices to seek the core banking account numbers with IFSC code of bank branch for seeding the same with the portable Universal PF Account Number (UAN).

"Government issued direction to issue order making submission of Bank Accounts by the members mandatory in order to facilitate the allotment of UAN, proper implementation of the EPF Scheme, 1952 and removal of the difficulties in the matter of payment of accumulations in the Fund to members after they cease to be such members," an office order said.

EPFO's Central Provident Fund Commissioner KK Jalan has said that these directives shall help the body in getting the bank account details of all the members which are necessary for making UAN operational.

At present, EPFO has already captured bank account details in respect of 1.80 crore employees, PAN details in respect of 86.9 lakh employees and Aadhar number in respect of 28.2 lakh employees.