Today, March 14, with a lump sum payment, the supplementary pension advance – totaling 65 million euros – is paid to 37,500 beneficiaries, after the completion of the relevant checks by the EFKA services.

The 37,500 beneficiaries come in addition to the additional 43,000 insured whose supplementary pension was issued in the first two months of 2023, and the majority of whom will see money in their accounts at the end of the month along with the corresponding retrospectives.

With these two interventions, more than 80,000 insured benefit and the problem of overdue supplementary pensions is also dealt with in practice. It is the next step after tackling EFKA’s main problem which was the issuance of outstanding main pensions – with 510,000 awards within 24 months and a drastic reduction in the award time from 19 months in 2019 to just 60 days on average today.

At the same time, from this afternoon a special electronic service (www.efka.gov.gr/prokatavoliepik) will be launched on the EFKA website where the insured who did not receive the advance payment for any reason can be informed of the exact reason for the non-payment.

The supplementary pension advance payment was established a few days ago following a relevant amendment submitted to the Parliament by the Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Kostis Hatzidakis and beneficiaries are insured persons for whom their supplementary pension has not been issued and who meet the following conditions:

1. Their main pension has already been issued,
2. They have completed at least 15 years of supplementary insurance or 4,500 days of supplementary insurance,
3. The application for the grant of an auxiliary pension has been submitted before December 31, 2022.

A total of 37,500 insured persons met the above conditions. 50% of the beneficiaries concern applications submitted before December 31, 2021 and the remaining 50% concern applications submitted in 2022. The insured who did not cumulatively meet the above conditions or presented other legal or technical obstacles amount to approximately 7,200 and are divided into the following categories:

• 4,800 insured persons who have not completed 15 years of supplementary insurance or have not submitted the request to receive a supplementary pension by December 31, 2023;
• 790 insured self-employed with debts above the limits that have not been settled,
• 750 insured persons with incorrect identity information or incorrect IVAN,
• 750 insured persons for whom the supplement is issued by their professional Funds and from EFKA only receive a small part of it (Professional Funds of Food, Pharmaceutical, Petroleum and Insurers).
• 175 insured persons who are in the final stage of issuing their supplementary pension and will be paid at the end of April the final pension together with the corresponding retrospectives.

The advance is equal to 100 euros for each month of delay in issuance, as long as it is supplementary old-age pensions. The advance payment is set at 50 euros for supplementary disability pensions, as well as for the surviving spouse requesting a supplementary death pension.

So if someone who meets the conditions waits a year to get the supplementary old age pension, they will receive a lump sum of €1,200 (€100 times 12 months of waiting), if they wait two years €2,400 and so on.

Finally, it is recalled that within the first two months of 2023, 43,000 supplementary pensions were definitively issued out of a total of 80,000 that were pending for months or even years and for which the main pension has already been issued. In other words, more than 50% of the stock of expiring ancillaries with a previous main pension issue that had accumulated over the years was cleared.

The 26,000 insured from the above are going to be paid their final pension together with the corresponding retroactives at the end of March, while the remaining 17,000 have already been paid since the end of February.

This significant reduction in pending cases is the result of the doubling of awarding rates compared to the corresponding period last year, which is due to a series of actions and initiatives undertaken by the EFKA Administration (introduction of automated processes and digital tools, massive undertaking files of overdue supplementary pensions from the rapporteurs who until recently issued main pensions, putting into operation a special Control Tower and for supplementary pensions etc.).

The Minister of Labor and Social Affairs, Kostis Hatzidakis, said: “As we had promised, after solving the issue of the outstanding main pensions, we are now facing the corresponding issue of the supplementary ones. Starting the effort, we issued more than half a million pending pensions within 2 years and succeeded in Greece having pensions issued on average earlier than Germany (in Greece 60 days, in Germany 74 days).

Continuing now with the supplementary pensions, we managed within two months (January and February) to issue more than half of the supplementary pensions for which the main pension had been issued. And today, with the advance payment to the rest of the pensioners, we deal in a substantial and immediate way with a backlog that absolutely had to be closed. In total, more than 80,000 insured benefit from our interventions in supplementary pensions. We systematically and stubbornly continue the effort for an EFKA that serves the Greek citizens better and better”.

The Governor of EFKA, Panagiotis Doufexis, said: “The establishment of the advance payment of supplementary pensions in combination with the significant acceleration of the rates of awarding, brings even closer to the definitive treatment of the problem of pending supplementary pensions. Now the actual backlogs are decreasing at twice the rate of the past. Every day, EFKA’s services close pending issues from the past and make the new mechanism for issuing pensions even stronger.”