The Ministry of Housing and Urban-rural Development ("MOHURD") has recently distributed the Circular on Building and Improving Integrated Service Platforms for Housing Provident Funds (the "Circular").
The Circular reads that attention shall be focused on sorting out service items, optimizing service procedures, developing the integrated management system, establishing the safety guarantee mechanism, among other key steps. Clear development demands and work requirements shall be put forward for entities undertaking the development of service platforms, and the development progress and quality will be monitored and evaluated and projects reviews will be conducted in a strict manner. In addition, the Circular clearly states that efforts shall be made according to characteristics of online business, to work out a list of service items, prepare the guide to housing provident fund services and the operation manuals for service platforms, and make clear the examination rules and evaluation indicators for online business. Also, online service procedures need to be further optimized through simplifying service steps and requested documents and shortening the processing timeframe. Furthermore, the Circular emphasizes the need to improve functions that enable the inquiry of service status, the monitoring of the processing period, the posting of comments on online services, etc., accurately understand the need of employees contributing to the housing provident fund and take an active approach to accepting public oversight.