EPF and EPS From Abroad: How to Find and Claim Your Indian Pension Money

You worked in India. Maybe for two years on a posting, maybe for eleven years before you emigrated. Money came out of your salary every month and your employer added more. Then you left, and the paperwork stayed behind.

That money is almost certainly still there. It does not expire. But the route to it is not obvious from outside India, and the guidance you find online is frequently years out of date. This article sets out what is actually true, sourced to official Indian material, and it says plainly which parts you can do yourself for free.

Two schemes, not one

Your Indian payslip deduction fed two different things, and they behave completely differently when you leave.

The Employees' Provident Fund (EPF) is an accumulation. It is a pot with your name on it, credited with interest each year. When you become entitled to it, you get the balance.

The Employees' Pension Scheme, 1995 (EPS) is a pension. It is not a pot you own. It is an entitlement that depends on how long you were in it. Under paragraph 12 of the EPS, a member is entitled to superannuation pension if he has rendered eligible service of ten years or more and retires on attaining the age of 58. Below that threshold you are in different territory entirely, which we cover further down.

The split

An employee in a covered establishment contributes 12 per cent of wages, and the employer contributes 12 per cent as well. The statutory wage ceiling is Rs 15,000 per month, and it has been Rs 15,000 since 1 September 2014.

The two halves do not go to the same place. Your 12 per cent goes to the provident fund. Out of the employer's share, 8.33 per cent is diverted to the Pension Fund, with the remainder going to the provident fund, and the employer separately contributes 0.5 per cent of pay to the deposit linked insurance scheme.

This matters more than it sounds. People assume "my PF" is one number. It is two numbers with two different exit rules, and it is very common to claim one and never claim the other.

The UAN, and why yours may not exist

The Universal Account Number is a 12 digit number allotted to each subscriber. It is the spine of the modern system. It links the separate member IDs you were given by each employer, it enables transfers, and it is what you log in with.

If you left India before the UAN existed, you very likely do not have one, or you have one that was created later and never activated. That is the single most common reason a returning member concludes their money is gone. It is not gone. It is sitting under an old member ID that has never been attached to a UAN.

Activating and using it from outside India

UAN activation is essential for availing online services of EPFO. Once activated, the member interface lets you download your passbook, print the UAN card, and modify KYC details. All of that is free.

The friction for people abroad is the mobile number. Activation and most online steps run on a one time password sent to the mobile number held on the record, and Aadhaar based verification is used for demographic changes. If your Indian number lapsed a decade ago, that OTP goes nowhere.

Linking old member IDs

The UAN exists precisely to consolidate multiple member IDs into one account, and it supports transfer between employers. If you had three Indian employers, expect three member IDs. Each one is a separate thread, and each one has to be found before it can be joined.

Inoperative accounts: the rule most guidance gets wrong

This is the part where old articles will actively mislead you.

The old position was that an EPF account went inoperative after three years without contributions, and stopped earning interest at that point. That is no longer how it works.

Paragraph 72(6) of the EPF Scheme was amended by notification G.S.R. 1065(E) dated 11 November 2016, and the government's own statement is that interest shall be credited to the account of a member up to the age of 58 years.

The current definition, restated by the Central Board of Trustees in March 2026, is that an account is inoperative where no contribution is received for a continuous period of three years after the member has attained 55 years of age, or from the date of retirement, whichever is later. The EPFO's own FAQ puts the same rule in the member's language: an account is inoperative where contribution has not been received for three years after retirement or permanent migration abroad or in case of death, and on the question of whether interest stops, the answer given is that at present all accounts will earn interest up to 58 years of age of a member.

Read that carefully, because it changes the arithmetic of your situation. If you left India at 31 and did nothing, your account did not freeze at 34. The clock that matters runs from a life event, not from your last contribution. That is also why balances of this kind are large: the Ministry told Parliament that inoperative accounts held Rs 4,962.70 crore as at 31 March 2022.

What happens to the money

It stays yours and it stays claimable. There is no forfeiture step in the scheme.

EPFO actively tries to give it back. Regional offices run liquidation drives, and members with inoperative accounts are encouraged and assisted in submitting claims to access their accumulated funds through UAN based services, KYC updating and Aadhaar authentication. In 2026 the Board approved a pilot for auto settlement of small inoperative balances, initially for accounts of Rs 1,000 or less, credited directly to Aadhaar seeded bank accounts without a fresh claim, with later phases intended to extend beyond that limit.

If your balance is meaningful, do not wait for a pilot to reach you. File.

Claiming from another country

The claim architecture is straightforward once you know the names.

For provident fund settlement and advances, EPFO uses the Composite Claim Form in an Aadhaar and a non Aadhaar version. For the pension side, Form 10C covers the withdrawal benefit and the Scheme Certificate, and Form 10D is the monthly pension claim once ten years of eligible service is complete. Form 13 handles transfers.

Online filing requires an activated, Aadhaar linked UAN with employer approved KYC. That is the fast road, and if you can walk it, walk it.

When the OTP road is closed

If Aadhaar based verification is not available to you, because you have no Aadhaar, or because the mobile number linked to it is dead, the paper route still exists and it is the one non residents most often need.

The non Aadhaar version of the composite claim form exists for exactly this case, and it carries an attestation requirement. The instructions to Form 10C state the general rule: the claim is submitted through the employer under whom the member was last employed. Where the establishment has closed, the form provides for attestation by an authorised official, including a magistrate, a gazetted officer, a postmaster or a bank manager. That escape hatch is the reason a closed employer is an obstacle rather than an ending.

If a claim stalls, EPFO runs a grievance portal, EPFiGMS, which routes complaints to the office that holds your file across its network of locations. Using it costs nothing.

One warning. The member portal itself carries a notice that EPFO will not ask for Aadhaar, PAN or bank details over the phone. Anyone who contacts you offering to release your PF for a fee, in exchange for those details, is not EPFO.

International Workers and Social Security Agreements

If you are a foreign national who did a posting in India, or an Indian who was posted abroad, you sit in a separate legal category and the rules genuinely differ.

An International Worker is, in EPFO's framing, an Indian employee who has worked or is going to work in a country with which India has a social security agreement, or an employee holding other than an Indian passport working for a covered establishment in India.

India maintains agreements with a number of countries, and the authoritative roster is published on the EPFO International Workers page. Check it there rather than trusting a list in an article, including this one. We do not reproduce the roster because it changes.

The Certificate of Coverage

Where an agreement is in force, a worker posted from one country to the other can remain subject to the home country's legislation for the period of the posting, evidenced by a certificate issued by the home authority. EPFO issues Certificates of Coverage to employees posted to agreement countries. The EPFO handbook on operating agreements sets out the mechanics, including the detachment certificate that establishes excluded employee status in India, and the principle that benefits are not reduced or modified solely because the beneficiary resides in the other state.

The agreements also provide totalisation, meaning insurance periods completed in each country can be counted together where necessary to establish eligibility, and portability, so a pension can be received in the country of residence.

Why your passport country changes the exit

This is the point that catches people out. The EPFO FAQ is explicit. Only those International Workers who are covered by an SSA will be eligible for withdrawal benefit under the EPS, 1995, and only where they have not rendered ten years of eligible service even after including any totalisation benefit. For International Workers from non SSA countries, the withdrawal benefit under EPS is not available.

On the provident fund side, the same FAQ states that for persons covered by an SSA, the full amount standing to the member's credit is payable on ceasing to be an employee in a covered establishment. Workers from non SSA countries face the ordinary position, with the full EPF balance payable on retirement after 58 or on permanent and total incapacity.

So two colleagues who did the same posting can face completely different exit options, purely because of which passport they hold.

EPS: pension, withdrawal benefit, and the Scheme Certificate

Ten years of eligible service is the hinge.

Below ten years, paragraph 14 of the EPS gives a withdrawal benefit calculated on Table D. At or above ten years, you are in pension territory and the withdrawal benefit is no longer the route.

The Scheme Certificate is the document most departing workers should have asked for and did not. It records your pensionable service and pensionable salary, and it preserves them. If you later return to covered employment in India, that service is carried forward instead of being cashed out and lost. The instructions to Form 10C are direct about the consequence at the threshold: where service is ten years or more, only a Scheme Certificate can be issued.

If you left India at nine years and took the cash without understanding this, that is done. If you left at nine years and never claimed anything, you still have a decision to make, and it is worth making deliberately rather than by default.

Where people actually lose the thread

In our casework the failure points repeat.

Name spelling. The EPF record carries the name your employer typed. Your passport carries something slightly different. One initial, one expanded middle name, one transposed surname, and the automated match fails.

Date of birth. The Ministry has acknowledged that date of birth is missing or wrong for large numbers of members. EPFO permits correction, and its FAQ position is that date of birth once given is not normally changed, however it can be changed with proper documentary evidence, with corrections routed through the member portal and approved by the employer.

Closed employers. The attestation route described above exists precisely because establishments shut down.

Exempted trusts. Not every rupee sits with EPFO. An employer can run its own provident fund trust, and the trust has to take exemption from the EPF Scheme to do so. If yours was exempted, your money is with the trust, not the regional office, and the passbook you are staring at will look empty. This is the single most common cause of "EPFO says I have nothing".

Multiple member IDs. Three employers, three IDs, one of which you have forgotten entirely.

When the member has died

Families abroad face the same machinery with an extra layer.

Where a valid nomination exists, benefits follow it. Where there is no nomination, the EPFO position is that the provident fund is payable to the family members in equal shares under paragraph 70(ii) of the EPF Scheme, 1952. For a member who nominated before marrying, the nomination is treated as invalid on acquiring a family, and benefits under EPS are paid to the spouse and children.

There are three separate entitlements to consider on a death: the provident fund balance, any family pension under EPS, and the deposit linked insurance benefit. Families routinely claim one and never learn about the others.

Nomination is now mandatory, and if you are reading this as a living member with an Indian record, filing an e-nomination is a free ten minute job that spares your family months.

What this costs, and what we add

Everything above is free. The portals are free, the forms are free, the grievance route is free, and EPFO does not charge you to be given your own money. If someone quotes you a percentage of your balance to "unlock" it, walk away.

You can do this yourself. Start with our free two minute pension check and the directory of official pension portals, which has 53 entries and points you at the real government sites in each country.

What a paid report adds is not access. It is completeness and evidence.

Most people who worked in India also worked somewhere else. Those systems do not talk to each other, and no single portal will tell you what exists in your name across them. We cover 41 countries, we have studied 54 pension systems, and 39 national pension authorities have replied to us in writing about how their rules actually operate in practice, and we track 47 authorities on our scoreboard, which publishes on 1 October 2026.

We also handle the part you cannot search for. Whether your former employer was exempted. Whether your EPS service crossed the ten year line. Which of your member IDs are linked and which are orphaned. Whether an SSA changes your exit terms. And we hand you a sourced, dated document that a family member, an executor or a lawyer can act on without repeating the work.

The Country Pension Identification Report is $99 for a single country. The Enhanced Pension Identification Report is $499 where a working life spans several systems. The Global Pension Identification Report is $799 for full coverage across everywhere you have worked.

If India is your only foreign chapter, do it yourself. If it is one of four, the arithmetic changes.

Frequently asked questions

Does my EPF money expire if I never claim it?

No. There is no forfeiture provision. The account can become inoperative, which is a status, not a confiscation, and EPFO runs drives specifically to settle those accounts.

Does an inoperative account still earn interest?

Under the position stated by the Ministry and by EPFO, interest is credited up to the member's age of 58. The old rule, that interest stopped three years after the last contribution, was changed by the notification of 11 November 2016.

Can I claim without an Indian mobile number linked to Aadhaar?

The online route depends on Aadhaar linked verification, so in practice it will not open for you. The paper route remains, using the non Aadhaar composite claim form with attestation, submitted through your last employer or, where the establishment has closed, attested by an authorised official such as a magistrate, gazetted officer, postmaster or bank manager.

I worked in India for six years and left. Do I get a pension?

Not a monthly pension. Ten years of eligible service is the threshold for superannuation pension under the EPS. Below it you are looking at a withdrawal benefit under Table D, or a Scheme Certificate that preserves the service if you ever return.

I am a foreign national who did a three year posting in India. What can I take out?

It depends on whether your country has a social security agreement with India. EPFO's own FAQ states that only International Workers covered by an SSA are eligible for the EPS withdrawal benefit, and that for persons covered by an SSA the full provident fund balance is payable on ceasing to be an employee. Workers from non SSA countries generally wait until 58.

My father worked in India and has died. What do we do?

Identify the member ID or UAN, then pursue three separate entitlements: the provident fund balance, any EPS family pension, and the deposit linked insurance benefit. Where no valid nomination exists, the provident fund is payable to family members in equal shares under paragraph 70(ii) of the EPF Scheme.

PensionHunter is a research and administrative assistance service. We are not regulated by SEBI, the PFRDA, the FCA or any equivalent authority, and we are not financial or tax advisers. We give no financial or tax advice. We never hold, receive or claim your money. We identify what exists in your name, who holds it now and how to reach them. All decisions remain yours.

Sources, all verified 26 August 2026

- https://www.epfindia.gov.in/site_en/International_workers.php

- https://epfindia.gov.in/site_en/FAQ.php

- https://pmvbry.epfindia.gov.in/faq-epfo/

- https://pmvbry.epfindia.gov.in/pension-scheme-eps/

- https://epfindia.gov.in/site_en/WhichClaimForm.php

- https://epfindia.gov.in/site_docs/PDFs/Downloads_PDFs/Form10C_Instructions_Eng.pdf

- https://epfindia.gov.in/site_docs/PDFs/Downloads_PDFs/EPS95_update102008.pdf

- https://www.epfindia.gov.in/site_docs/PDFs/Operating_SSAs_PDFs/Hand_Book.pdf

- https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1496872

- https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2234502&reg=3&lang=1

- https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1942083

- https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2246197&reg=3&lang=2

- https://unifiedportal-mem.epfindia.gov.in/memberinterface/

- https://epfigms.gov.in/

- https://epfindia.gov.in/site_en/Downloads.php