Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead • Hacker News Board

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#101

Post by mucle6 » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 3:49 PM UTC

samus wrote: post #55

methou wrote: post #50

Every year my grand parents have to take a photo of themselves holding a recent newspaper with date clearly visible to whoever is managing their pension. After the internet and apps plaged the world, now they have to download an app then tilt node and wink to the camera to prove that they are alive. ("If you cannot use a phone, ask your children") I have mixed feeling about this, it's hard to say this is not degenera…

What about a public registry of deaths that can notify parties with justified interest (pension providers, maybe insurances and banks) about such events? That should work for domestic cases at least. Tracking deaths for people living abroad in their retirement is more tricky I admit. Maybe such a registry doesn't exist in the UK to begin with? Since it also doesn't have a residence registry. Edit: my bad, it actually…

That assumes all deaths are logged. There are strong financial incentives for relatives to hide a death from the government if it means getting a check every month

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#102

Post by ajross » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 3:50 PM UTC

logifail wrote: post #100

ajross wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like, "some people try to commit fraud, so banks are required to implement AML/KYC processes to make the attack more difficult". Repeatedly asserting one is not dead is, if you think about it, more or less analogous to the documentation requirements for managing a large account at an investment bank. Is it the best solution? Likely not. But the problem is real and does demand a solution of some form.

> Is it the best solution? Likely not. But the problem is real and does demand a solution of some form. From the original article: "According to the Department for Education (DfE), which oversees Teachers’ Pensions, death register entries may be matched to scheme members even if personal details differ. The DfE told the Guardian that once a possible match has been identified, the beneficiary may be asked to confirm t…

> same approach that gave us the Post Office scandal.

I don't follow? This is just a data quality problem. Should it be fixed? Obviously. But everyone deals with bad data. You can't fix that, you just optimize around it.

The Post Office scandal was emphatically NOT about a data quality problem. It was that they were criminally prosecuting people to cover up their data quality problem. Again, everyone has bad data.

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#103

Post by BalinKing » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 3:53 PM UTC

wslh wrote: post #75

Macha wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan estimated 5% in 2006, for one data point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodokushi

Japan is Japan [1]. What is your data point for European and American countries? [1] https://hansondoremus.com/2014-4-28-there-are-four-kinds-of-...

That blog post doesn't actually talk about Japan except for in a passing quote, which itself (as best I can tell) specifically refers to economic growth and very well might be apocryphal in the first place.[0]

[0] https://slate.com/business/2012/04/the-four-types-of-economi...

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#104

Post by karaterobot » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 3:54 PM UTC

> She had fallen victim to a vetting procedure that regularly checks pension beneficiaries against the death register to prevent ineligible payments... the beneficiary may be asked to confirm that they are not the same deceased stranger every 12 months since the system, administered by Capita, does not log a disproved link.

As a consultant, I would be willing to provide a simple fix to this problem for a modest fee. I won't say what it is yet, but I am confident it would work.

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#105

Post by crote » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 3:59 PM UTC

derivative7 wrote: post #66

methou wrote: post #50

Every year my grand parents have to take a photo of themselves holding a recent newspaper with date clearly visible to whoever is managing their pension. After the internet and apps plaged the world, now they have to download an app then tilt node and wink to the camera to prove that they are alive. ("If you cannot use a phone, ask your children") I have mixed feeling about this, it's hard to say this is not degenera…

Is it so terrible to do a very simple procedure once a year to avoid fraud?

Is it so terrible to just have the government keep track of its citizens properly, so that there is a single source of truth one can actually rely on?

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#106

Post by dazc » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 4:08 PM UTC

zimpenfish wrote: post #18

radiator wrote: post #14

> ... asked to confirm that they are not the same deceased stranger every 12 months since the system, administered by Capita, does not log a disproved link. This is a bug in their system. Rather than fixing it, they prefer repeatedly and unashamedly asking old people whether they are dead.

To be fair, there have been several stories (normally "world's oldest person!!!" type) where relatives have been claiming pensions and benefits for sometimes decades after the actual person died. Whether the number of those stories and the amount of money involved is worth the hassle to the people not defrauding governments is left as an exercise to the reader...

Reminded of the story where a dead body was taken to a post office in Ireland in an attempt to withdraw pension money...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60091753

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#107

Post by anotherhue » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 4:10 PM UTC

samus wrote: post #55

methou wrote: post #50

Every year my grand parents have to take a photo of themselves holding a recent newspaper with date clearly visible to whoever is managing their pension. After the internet and apps plaged the world, now they have to download an app then tilt node and wink to the camera to prove that they are alive. ("If you cannot use a phone, ask your children") I have mixed feeling about this, it's hard to say this is not degenera…

What about a public registry of deaths that can notify parties with justified interest (pension providers, maybe insurances and banks) about such events? That should work for domestic cases at least. Tracking deaths for people living abroad in their retirement is more tricky I admit. Maybe such a registry doesn't exist in the UK to begin with? Since it also doesn't have a residence registry. Edit: my bad, it actually…

The death itself may be hidden for a long time.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/world-oldest...

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#108

Post by Marazan » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 4:10 PM UTC

derivative7 wrote: post #66

methou wrote: post #50

Every year my grand parents have to take a photo of themselves holding a recent newspaper with date clearly visible to whoever is managing their pension. After the internet and apps plaged the world, now they have to download an app then tilt node and wink to the camera to prove that they are alive. ("If you cannot use a phone, ask your children") I have mixed feeling about this, it's hard to say this is not degenera…

Is it so terrible to do a very simple procedure once a year to avoid fraud?

What simple procedures are you doing every year to reduce fraud?

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#109

Post by aetherson » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 4:16 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #73

bachmeier wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair? That's like saying "To be fair, some people try to steal money from banks, so it's okay if the ATM sometimes doesn't work."

More like, "some people try to commit fraud, so banks are required to implement AML/KYC processes to make the attack more difficult". Repeatedly asserting one is not dead is, if you think about it, more or less analogous to the documentation requirements for managing a large account at an investment bank. Is it the best solution? Likely not. But the problem is real and does demand a solution of some form.

AML/KYC regulations are, well, as the name suggests, anti-money laundering regulations, they aren't about the customers defrauding the bank. The bank presumably doesn't need to have regulations to incent it to keep its customers from defrauding the bank itself.

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#110

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 4:20 PM UTC

withinboredom wrote: post #88

PaulHoule wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think had relatives in Poland in the 1980s who were collecting social security for a dead person. The U.S. has a database of social security numbers of the deceased which is quite interesting for a few reasons. It is closely guarded because social security numbers are assigned sequentially by geographic region so if you know someone’s SSN you can get their date of birth or vice versa. If you manage to get in that d…

> because social security numbers are assigned sequentially by geographic region so if you know someone’s SSN you can get their date of birth or vice versa. This has been false for decades. (early '90s, I think?)

If it stopped being true in 1990, then it remains true for anybody over the age of 34, which is not exactly a small chunk of the population. (Though yes it's a good thing they stopped doing sequential numbers)

Edit: https://www.ssa.gov/employer/randomizationfaqs.html seems to say that the change was only implemented in 2011, which would mean that even more of the population is unaffected.