Social Security fraud has been a hot button topic for a few years, and the agency has been, slowly but surely, implementing measures to help combat it.
The problem until now has been that not everyone has the same access to technology or is not tech savvy enough to be able to make these procedures universal.
After all, the Social Security Administration (SSA) caters to the elderly and the disabled, some of he most disenfranchised communities there are, and implementing measures that would prevent some deserving individuals from accessing their rightful benefits would not be a good look.
However, times are changing, and the SSA has decided that there are some measures that can be taken to improve their identity verification procedures that will not infringe on someone’s right to access benefits and will help weed out fraud.
The new Social Security benefits updates
There are two new main ways that the SSA will use to ensure that benefits are not being abused. They will be implemented over the next two weeks and will slowly but surely hopefully help the situation. The measures will apply to both benefit claims and direct deposit changes.
According to the SSA blog, “Individuals seeking these services who cannot use their personal my Social Security account, which requires online identity proofing, will then need to visit a local Social Security office to prove their identity in person. At the same time, the agency will expedite processing all direct deposit change requests – both in person and online – to one business day. Prior to this change, online direct deposit changes were held for 30 days.”
The transition period will be used primarily to train frontline employees and management about the new policy and careful monitoring of policy compliance and at the end of this training period (March 31, 2025) the new online digital identity proofing and in-person identity proofing will be fully enforced.
Lee Dudek, Acting Commissioner of Social Security endorses this measures and applauds them as he states that “Americans deserve to have their Social Security records protected with the utmost integrity and vigilance. For far too long, the agency has used antiquated methods for proving identity. Social Security can better protect Americans while expediting service.”
The implementation of this verification does not mean that individuals who do not or cannot use the agency’s online my Social Security services will not have any other recourse to ask questions or start processes that require a bit of time and multiple data gathering expeditions. Phone services will continue to help beneficiaries start their claim, but to complete the process the beneficiaries will have to attend in person to verify their identity. This would cut instances of fraud but would help those with limited mobility not make any unnecessary trips by ensuring that the process is well under way before they need to take the trip. Plus, with the implementation of appointments, services will be less crowded as there are less walk ins.
The new recommendation is to call to request an in-person appointment, as questions relevant to your benefit and gather all the paperwork in advance so that the process is as swift as possible. This will be helped by the fact that all frontline employees in all offices throughout the country will return to full on sight work, ensuring maximum staffing available.
The SSA also plans to incorporate the Department of Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s payment integrity service called Account Verification Service (AVS) which provides “instant bank verification services to proactively and timely prevent fraud associated with direct deposit change requests.” This will not be done in the next two weeks, but it will be available soon and will also help cut down of fraud.
