The issuance of pension decisions continued at an intensive rate in April, sealing the high speeds with which the EFKA is now moving on all “fronts”, i.e. main pensions, auxiliary pensions and lump sums, the Ministry of Labor says in a statement.

More specifically, according to the latest data available from EFKA:

1. During April 2023, 18,100 decisions on main pensions, 7,150 decisions on auxiliary pensions and 10,800 decisions on one-off benefits were issued. A total of 36,050 pending pensions were “closed” last month.

2. Regarding the main pensions, since January 2021, that is, within 28 months, 590,000 main pensions have been issued. If it is taken into account that the adults in Greece are estimated at 8 million, this means that 1 in 14 adults who often waited 3, 5 or 7 years for their pension received their pension in that time.

The overdue main pensions of 2021 have been limited to around 4,000, i.e. less than 2%. (from 9,500 in November 2022). These are mainly complex pension cases with particularities such as – among others – unsettled debts, court pending cases, absence of a medical opinion on disability pensions, non-establishment of a pension right. And the clearing rate of applications for main pension submitted in 2022 has reached 90%, with the vast majority of pending applications concerning the fourth quarter of the year.

3. The enormous progress in the part of the main pensions is also reflected in the virtually zeroing of the expenditure on the overdue pensions after it was limited to only 3 million euros at the end of April, from 9 million euros in November and about half a billion. euros (487 million euros) in July 2019.

4. Since the beginning of the year, i.e. in the period January-April 2023, 149,600 pension decisions were issued, of which 75,500 concern main pensions, 60,100 supplementary pensions and 14,500 lump sums. That is to say, emphasis was placed on dealing with the backlogs in supplementary and one-off pensions, with the extension of the use of the automated procedures and digital tools introduced by the EFKA administration for the main pensions, with particularly successful results.

5. As regards supplementary pensions, in the first quarter of the year, approximately 80% of the 83,000 cases pending on 31 December 2022 (and for which the main pension had already been issued) were closed, thanks to a large acceleration of awarding rates. It is recalled that the rest who founded the right to receive a supplementary pension at the end of last year received in mid-March retroactively 100 euros for each month of delay.

6 The picture is equally positive for lump sums, as out of a total of 20,485 pending lump sums that can be issued on December 31, 2022, by the end of April, decisions had been issued to grant 14,500 lump sums. The one-off reduction in outstandings exceeds 70%, mainly thanks to the automated awarding procedures implemented recently. The process for both the pending supplementary pensions and the lump sums is expected to be completed by the summer.

7. Regarding the cases of pensioners with parallel insurance, after the recent activation of the necessary software, the parallel pension has been cleared and paid to 2,000 pensioners. The administration of EFKA estimates that the total parallel pensions do not exceed 15,000 and an immediate acceleration of the issuance of the relevant decisions is expected, as automation software is now also used.

8. In the part of new pension applications, in the period January-April 2023, 63,195 applications were submitted. For the whole of 2022, 211,133 new applications were submitted, with the rate of new applications being maintained at the same high levels as in 2021. Finally, it is noted that the rate of awarding of main pensions is also maintained high despite the drastic reduction in pending cases. It is characteristic that the daily production of pensions exceeds 1,100 (average award for the last 28 months) out of 500 issued in 2019.

The Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Kostis Hatzidakis said: “590,000 main pension decisions were issued in 28 months, which is a record in the history of the country’s insurance funds. That didn’t happen, it worked. Because with common sense reforms, “out of the box” solutions and the introduction of new digital management tools, we succeeded not only in clearing the stock of overdue main pensions that had accumulated in previous years, but also in reducing the awarding times of new pensions to 2 months by average. And we stepped up to eliminate the “stocks” of supplementary pensions and lump sums. EFKA now produces pensions and not delays and suffering. And it will become even more modern, even friendlier to pensioners and the insured with the reforms we have launched such as the integration of the 88 different databases into a single Information System, the completion of the digitalization of the insured’s identity cards, the appointment of General Directors and Directors from the private sector. With new ideas and actions, building on what we have already achieved, we are creating the EFKA of the new era”.