Letter Report on the New YorkCity Fire Pension Fund’s Controls over the Identification of Deceased Individuals Collecting Pension Payments
AUDIT REPORT IN BRIEF
FIRE utilizes a monthly death match report comparing Federal Social Security Administration (SSA) and PPMS records to identify deceased individuals to whom pension benefits are paid. FIRE itself does not produce the death match reports. Prior to October 2010, FIRE would access the New York City Financial Information Service Agency’s (FISA) Death Match Discrepancy Report from the Report Management and Distribution System (RMDS). FISA receives the SSA death reports and compares that data against the data in PPMS to create the RMDS Death Match Discrepancy Report. The report lists individuals who have been reported as deceased during that month (only) and are also receiving pension payments.
As of October 2010, FIRE replaced the RMDS Death Match Discrepancy Report with the City Human Resources and Management System (CHRMS) death match report. As a result, FIRE currently uses the HR-11 report generated through the CHRMS. The HR-11 report, preprogrammed by the New York City Office of Payroll Administration (OPA), utilizes a cumulative database to identify and reduce instances of payments to deceased recipients and to compare dates of death recorded within PPMS to a database of deceased individuals. A match is generated when a pensioner or beneficiary listed as active (not deceased) in PPMS is reported as deceased in the database. The database of deceased individuals is updated on a monthly basis with a file provided by SSA.
The audit objective was to determine whether FIRE 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 FIRE took appropriate action on those individuals who were identified as deceased and adequately handles the suspension of pension payments once notified of an individual’s date of death. However, FIRE did not update its controls over identification of deceased individuals collecting pensions after their date of death in a timely manner. Specifically, FIRE delayed using the HR-11 (cumulative database), which became available in April 2010 and corrected deficiencies in the Death Match Discrepancy Report (non-cumulative), until October 2010.
Because FIRE plans on continuing to use the HR-11 report and has taken appropriate action on those individuals identified as deceased, no recommendations for corrective action are being made in this Letter Report.