The liquidation of the outstanding supplementary pensions is in the final stretch

By Chrysostomos Tsoufis

The Ministry of Labor and EFKA are pushing forward at full speed to clear the stock and outstanding auxiliary pensions as the problem with the main pensions tends to become a thing of the past.

Already 97% of outstanding principal pensions have been cleared and according to the estimates of EFKA executives, within the next 3-4 weeks, the remaining 3%, i.e. approximately 30,000 pensions, will have been dealt with. 2 years ago EFKA owed more than €700 million in main pensions and now this debt does not even exceed €40 million. The pending main ones do not include cases with insurance time abroad but also pensions with consecutive and/or parallel insurance which will be dealt with in a second stage.

At EFKA they are very optimistic that until June 2023 they will be able to put a tick next to the problem of pending adjuncts. Overdue supplementary certificates – i.e. for those whose waiting time until their issuance has exceeded 3 months – were estimated at approx. 94,000 at the end of August while overdue one-off applications – in the public and private sector – approach 9,500. The total amount of debts amounts to approx €180 million

Without yet having been given the weight to deal with the adjuncts, an increase in the rate of their award was observed during the summer that exceeded 10% and from now on things will get better and better, EFKA executives told us, mainly because in the overwhelmingly more cases, a condition for the calculation of the auxiliary is that the decision on the main pension has previously been issued.

Of course, this does not mean that the EFKA services will leave the issue to its own devices. A recipe that succeeds does not change and therefore, the system of Fast track awarding, which was implemented with indisputable success in the main pensions, will also be transferred to the auxiliary ones. This means that if the rapporteur in charge of issuing a decision has not done so within three months, then the pension will be issued automatically based on the data in the EFKA database in combination with the data provided by the insured which in the first phase under the law they are presumed to be true. Their verification will be done at a later stage after the pension has been issued.

The transfer of personnel is expected to play an important role as it is estimated that approximately 200 “powder-smoked” employees with extensive experience in issuing the main pensions will be asked to assist in the auxiliary ones.

The digital submission of new applications

The key to the developments will of course be the fact that for 6 months now the digital submission of new applications for supplementary grants has been implemented, which in itself reduces the total awarding time by at least 2-3 months because the time required for the collection and examination of the necessary supporting documents. It is not just a coincidence that EFKA, despite operating with 900 fewer employees, precisely because it has developed the appropriate know-how, is able to issue much more pensions than when it had the specific employees in its force.

In the last 20 months, 430,000 main pensions have been issued and they want to repeat this performance in EFKA with the auxiliary pensions.

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