"Strengthening Crackdown on Fraudulent Benefits"…Sharing Investigation Results of National and Basic Pension Recipients

From now on, beneficiary investigation data used for fraudulent claims in the National Pension and Basic Pension will be mutually shared. The purpose is to enhance supervisory linkage between the two pensions to minimize fraudulent claims.

On the 16th, the Ministry of Health and Welfare announced that the Cabinet approved partial amendments to the Enforcement Decree of the National Pension Act and the Enforcement Decree of the Basic Pension Act, which include this content. The core of this amendment is to establish a basis for mutual sharing of verification investigation results of the National Pension and Basic Pension.

Recently, the number of simultaneous beneficiaries of the two pensions has increased, but investigations on beneficiaries have been conducted separately, causing inefficiency in the investigations. A Ministry of Health and Welfare official explained, “The National Pension investigates marital status, etc., to pay survivor pensions, and the Basic Pension also conducts investigations to prevent fraudulent claims, but due to privacy issues, the results of each investigation were not shared.” This is because there was no legal foundation for the two pensions to exchange personal information from investigation results.

From now on, investigation results regarding changes in beneficiary rights commonly applied to both the National and Basic Pensions, such as death status and common-law marriage, can be mutually utilized. The Ministry of Health and Welfare explained that this will reduce the burden of duplicate investigations on beneficiaries and improve financial soundness, transparency, and reliability of the system through more detailed post-management. In addition, the partial amendment to the Enforcement Decree of the National Pension Act includes easing the disqualification criteria due to arrears of voluntary (continuous) subscribers from the current 3 months to 6 months, and adding industry and occupation to the disclosed personal information of high-amount and habitual defaulters, among other improvements and supplements to address some deficiencies found in system operation.

Lee Seuran, Director of Pension Policy at the Ministry of Health and Welfare, said, “Through this amendment to the Enforcement Decree of the National Pension Act and the Enforcement Decree of the Basic Pension Act, verification investigations for the increasing number of simultaneous beneficiaries of the National and Basic Pensions can be conducted more efficiently and accurately,” adding, “We will actively strive for more detailed post-management of beneficiaries in the future.”