The Employees Provident Fund Organisation has come up with an AI-based fully automatic claim settlement system. This system has helped EPFO increase the speed of claim settlement.

The need for this system arose after the organisation saw a substantial increase in the number of PF withdrawals amid the coronavirus pandemic. Operating with skeletal staff, the organisation was overburdened with the quantity of settlement claims, a report in Livemint stated.

EPFO said that now 54 per cent of the coronavirus claims are being settled through the system. Despite the shortage in manpower, the time frame to settle claims have been brought down to 3 days from 10 days.

The organisation settled 36.02 lakh claims in April-May 2020 as compared to 33.75 lakh in the same period previous year. The 36.02 lakh claims were settled by EPFO with only 50 per cent staff. "Apart from commitment of staff, use of artificial intelligence played a big role in achieving new benchmarks in claim settlement," said EPFO.

The EPFO now settles around 80,000 claims worth Rs 270 crore every day. The AI tool processes claims of all eligible, fully e-KYC compliant subscribers.