EPF gearing up for more e-withdrawals in Sarawak
KUCHING: A year has passed since the Employee’s Provident Fund’s (EPF) e-withdrawal system has come online, and so far results in Sarawak have been encouraging.
Speaking to The Borneo Post in an exclusive interview, head of EPF Sarawak Julpadya Sooma revealed that between January to September this year, the number of e-withdrawals transactions in Sarawak had amounted to 6,255 cases or circa 9 per cent of total withdrawal cases.
According to Julpadya, this was a well-received figure as EPF counters around Sarawak has seen less congestions over the past few months as the adoption of e-withdrawal system ramps up within the state.
“The e-withdrawal is a new facility that allows our members to submit their withdrawal applications online through the ‘i-Akaun’ app on their mobile phones.
“In Kuching itself, we have registered over 40,000 members for the ‘i-Akaun’ app so far, and we hope to see increased rates of e-withdrawal transactions taking place as we move forward – allowing us decongest our counters further while providing a more streamlined experience for customers.
“Based on our five year rolling plan, we aim to get between 60 and 70 per cent of all our current processes online.”
The e-withdrawal system provides support for five different types of withdrawals: buying or building a house, reducing or redeeming housing loans, monthly instalments for housing loans, education, and health which will be available soon.
By far, the most popular ewithdrawal is for education purposes as it accounts for 65 per cent of all total e-withdrawal transactions.
Benefits to applying online are plentiful as it allows EPF members the freedom of submitting and checking the status of their e-withdrawal applications anytime and anywhere.
Members will also be notified through SMS and the ‘i-Akuan’ app itself when application statuses have changed or if further documentation is required.
In fact, the only time members will be required to leave their comfort of their houses will be to confirm their thumbprints and identities at an EPF counter once their withdrawal applications have been approved.
According to Julpadya, this is strictly just a security measure to ensure the validity of a member’s identity and to reduce the chances of fraudulent transactions.
However, with thumb print recognition technology now so widely available on most mobile phones, he also guided that the entire thumbprint confirmation process may be moved online in the near future.
“Our ICT department is currently working on it so it may come soon. It fits in line with our plans and that is our promise actually to our members – to ensure that they don’t have to come to our counters at all.”
And besides just saving EPF members the time and money taken to make multiple trips down to their local EPF counters, the new facility also aims to reduce the confusion over withdrawal eligibilities by allowing EPF registered third party financial institutions and organisations to obtain data directly from EPF.
By allowing these institutions to do this, it allows them to best counsel their customers and save time during the withdrawal application phase.
For housing withdrawals, official third party institutions include RHB Bank, Maybank, Bank Islam, OCBC Bank, BSN, AmBank, UOB and CIMB. Upcoming additions to this growing list are the people’s bank, public bank and Hong Leong bank. In education, official third parties are the International Islamic University Malaysia, Multimedia University, Open University Malaysia, University of MARA Technology, and the incorporation of Malaysia’s higher education fund. And for the upcoming health withdrawals, EPF guides that current third parties involved are the national heart institute ( IJN).