Life existence monitoring
How we confirm pensioners are still eligible for payments
As a public body, it is important that we make sure we are only paying money to people who are entitled to receive it. As part of meeting this responsibility, we put steps in place to try to identify that members who are receiving their pension are still alive.
The approach we take varies depending on the pensioner's country of residence:
UK-based pensioners
We commission a tracing company* to undertake monthly checks against UK death records to help us identify any of our pensioners who have died where we have not been advised.
Whenever we are notified of a death of one of members, we will stop the pension, seek to obtain a death certificate, and attempt to identify and contact the next of kin.
Overseas-based pensioners
We currently have no automatic means to verify whether the pensioner is still alive, and therefore cannot confirm if payments should continue to be made to their bank account. Therefore, we periodically commission a tracing company* to assist in validating our overseas pensioners by contacting them to request that they provide evidence that they are still alive. If we do not receive a response, we will suspend the pension and undertake steps to try to locate a next of kin.
* Our current commissioned tracing company is Target Professional Services .