Audit Report on the New York City Employees’ Retirement System’s Controls over the Identification of Deceased Individuals Collecting Pension Payments
AUDIT REPORT IN BRIEF
New York City Employees’ Retirement System (NYCERS) generates its own death match report by utilizing weekly updates from the National Technical Information Service (NTIS), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The weekly file contains new deaths, changes and deletions to the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) Death Master File extract tape. NYCERS compares the data obtained from the NTIS against NYCERS pension payroll to create its own death match report—the Social Security Projects & Overpayments (SSPO). The SSPO report identifies the individuals name, social security number, date of birth, date of death, and address.
Upon the receipt of the SSPO report, the Pension Survivor Benefit Unit will verify if an individual’s death has been previously reported to NYCERS. If the death has not been previously reported, NYCERS will suspend monthly pension payments until the deceased status is confirmed for the individual. Pension payroll—related tasks are performed through the New York City Pension Payroll Management System (PPMS).
The audit objective was to determine whether NYCERS had the controls in place to detect and prevent the illegal collection of pension payments after the death of a pensioner or beneficiary.
Results
The audit found that NYCERS maintains adequate controls over the identification of deceased individuals collecting pension payments. Our review of the reports found that NYCERS took timely and appropriate action on the 100 individuals we sampled, who were identified as deceased. However, NYCERS can enhance their controls and potentially save $8,500 (the fee for weekly updates from NTIS) by utilizing the HR-11 and Death Match Discrepancy Reports which are available at no cost.
The audit recommended that the NYCERS should evaluate and consider the benefits of augmenting or replacing its current system with the City generated reports.
NYCERS officials generally agreed with our findings and recommendations, but felt that the cost of the weekly NTIS updates was justified due to the benefit derived from them.