New Delhi, Aug. 27 -- The Employees' Provident Fund (EPF) is mainly meant to help salaried individuals accumulate a sizeable corpus for retirement. However, members can also make partial withdrawals from their EPF accounts for specified financial requirements, such as marriage, higher education, repayment of a home loan, medical treatment and other eligible purposes.

For employees with a substantial home loan, using a portion of their EPF corpus may appear to be a useful option. The money can be used to reduce the outstanding loan, cut the overall interest burden and potentially ease monthly financial pressure. However, EPF withdrawals are allowed only subject to prescribed conditions and withdrawal limits.

Repaying an outstanding housi...