All you wanted to know about Employee Pension Scheme (EPS)

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EPS is a pension scheme made for the organized sector. All EPS members who have completed 9 years and 6 months of their service and have completed 58 years of service will get a pension through EPS Scheme.

An employee, who is a member of EPF, will automatically become a member of EPS. An Employer shares 12% of “Basic Pay + DA” to the employee EPF account, which is divided as below:

A large part of the employer’s share goes towards EPS. An employee’s EPF Account broadly consists of 3 parts:

• Employee pension scheme (EPS)
• Employee Provident Fund (EPF)
• Employee Deposit Linked Insurance (EDLI)

In this article, we will discuss the Employee Pension Scheme (EPS) in greater detail.

Table of Content:

1. Key features of the EPS Scheme
2. How to become a member of an EPS Scheme?
3. Types of pension available through EPS
4. How to calculate the amount of premature EPS Withdrawal?
5. What is EPS Scheme Certificate
6. How much pension can be received under the EPS Scheme?
7. EPS Online services through UMANG App.

Key features of EPS-Scheme

In case of the death of a pensioner, the pension will go to their spouse or children or nominee. As per EPS rules, spouse and 2 children will get the pension after the death of an EPS member.

• 2 children must be below 25 years of age. They will receive 25% of the widow pension until they are 25 years old.
• A disabled child will get 75% of the widow pension share until his/her lifetime.

Unlike other pension schemes such as NPS, where a family gets the accumulated pension corpus. In EPS, the family gets the pension and not the accumulated corpus after the death of an employee.

For the purpose of pension calculation, if the service duration is equal to or more than 6 months, it will be rounded off to 1 year. For example, if you worked for 12 years and 6 months, then your service will be counted as 13 years. However, if you worked for 12 years and 5 months, then the service will be counted only for 12 years.

Contributions of EPS are given as:

• 8.33% of the Employer contribution goes to the EPS account each month.
• The government also contributes to the EPS account by 1.16%.

That is, the government will contribute Rs.180 and an employer will contribute Rs.1250 as the maximum limit towards the EPS scheme of the employee.

Both of the above contributions are limited to a maximum of Rs.15,000 in Basic+DA.

The minimum pension under the EPS Scheme is Rs.1000/- and the maximum pension Rs. 7500/- per month. And the maximum tenure of pension calculation is 35 years.

Unlike EPF, the EPS contributions do not earn any interest.

You are eligible to receive more than one pension through EPS.

How to become a Member in an EPS Scheme?

• All employees who have EPF Account will automatically become a member of EPS Scheme, as mentioned earlier.
• Upon EPS membership, an employee will remain a member till the age of 58 years. Thereafter, an employee will become a pensioner and receives EPS pension and will no longer remain an EPS member.
• Once, the EPF/EPS membership is begun, it cannot be opted-out.
• The pension can be deferred until 60 years of age. For each deferred year, pension increases by 4%.
• There is no EPS membership to the employees joining after 1st September 2014, if the Basic Pay + DA is more than Rs.15,000.

Types of Pensions available through EPS

1. Superannuation:

This pension is given to those who have completed 58 years of service or must have completed at least 10 years of service. Pension will be provided after 58 years, whether you are in the service or not.

2. Early pension:

Between the age of 50 and before 58 years, if an employee is willing to retire voluntarily, in such case, an early pension can be taken but pension will reduce by 4% of each early retirement year. Also, an employee should have been in service for at least 10 years. And, while receiving early pension employee must not be in service of any sort.

3. Pension to Family Members:

• Pension is given to the family members in case of death of the EPS member, provided that an EPS member should have completed at least 1 month of employment. Pension allotment details among family members of the deceased are already explained in the previous section.
• The family member will also receive the pension in case of the death of EPS Pensioner. If the pensioner doesn’t have a family, the pension is given to the nominee and in case, a nominee is not mentioned then the pension is given to one of the parents of the pensioner.

How to calculate the amount of premature EPS Withdrawal?

The table shown below is used for the calculation of the withdrawal amount from EPS. It has the number of years of service along with the corresponding factor. This factor is multiplied by “Basic Pay+DA” and the resultant amount you will get on withdrawal.

For example, if a person wants to retire after completing 8 years of service and has the “Basic Pay + DA” equals to Rs. 22,000. But, as already mentioned the maximum amount of “Basic Pay+DA” is capped at Rs.15,000 by EPFO.

Therefore, the receivable amount will be:

15,000*8.22 = Rs. 1,23,300/-

Hence, a person who has completed 8 years of service, will receive his EPF Contribution of Rs.1,23,300.

You cannot withdraw your EPS Benefits, under the conditions given below:

• If you have not completed your employment for more than 180 days.
• If you have completed 10 years of service, but you are below 50 years of age.

In the above 2 cases, EPS Scheme Certificate is given to the EPS member, it is described in the next section.

What is EPS Scheme Certificate?

EPS Certificate is a certificate issued by the EPFO. If you have worked in an organization for more than 10 years and you want to withdraw from EPS you will not get your money but would get an EPS Scheme certificate, which you can use at age of 60 years to EPFO to get your pension.

This certificate consists of the basic details and the details of the service of an EPF member, as shown below in a snapshot taken from a sample EPS Certificate:

EPS Scheme Certificate also shows the family details of an employee and the nominee, who is eligible to claim a pension in case of death of the member.

So, who can get an EPS certificate?

Every employee who has an EPF account and is registered under EPFO can get EPS certificate for claiming his/her pension. The EPS balance can be either withdrawn after retirement or it can be claimed as pension by opting EPS certificate depending on the tenure of service and the age of the member, with some of the condition given below:

• If you have completed less than 10 years of service and your age is less than 58 years, then you are eligible either to apply for EPS Scheme Certificate or to withdraw the EPS.
• If you have completed 10 years of service or more and your age is less than 58 years, then you are not allowed to withdraw money from EPS account. But you can apply for the EPS Scheme Certificate, by filling up the Form 10C.
• If you have completed 10+ years of service and your age is more than 58, then you should apply for pension by filling up the Form 10D.
• In case you are joining a new company, then you are supposed to submit your scheme certificate to your new employer. In this process, your past service will get added to the new service and your pension amount will be cumulated.

How much pension can be received under the EPS Scheme?

Pension amount can be calculated using the formula given below:

Where the average salary (BASIC+DA) is the salary drawn in the last 12 months.

And, the pensionable service is the number of years of service after 15/11/1995.

Average salary is capped at Rs.15,000 and the pensionable service is capped at 35 years.

Therefore, if we calculate the pension amount based on these numbers, we will get:

Hence, Rs.7,500 is the maximum amount of pension you can get per month, irrespective of your years of service.

In a similar way, a pension is calculated for any amount of average salary and any amount of pensionable service.

EPS Online Services through UMANG App

You can download UMANG App and click on EPFO icon. You will find a screen as shown below:

Now, you can click “pensioner services”, where you will find 2 options, given in the image below:

You need to provide your EPFO Office details and your date of birth to view your passbook.

And, in order to update your “Jeevan Pramaan” (Life certificate), you need to provide your Aadhar details and registered mobile number. It will be verified through an OTP.

Also, you can submit Form-C details available under “Employee Centric Service”, in order to avail the benefits of EPS Scheme Certificate, as described in the previous section.

Hope you have found this information on EPS valuable. If you have further queries on EPS, feel free to post them in the comment below.