Processing of federal pension applications is not speeding up

The processing of federal pension claims is almost back to its pandemic peak. In August, requests took an average of two and a half months – 93 days – to be processed, compared to 91 days in July and 78 days in June.

This is the second-highest monthly processing time since July 2020, when the average peaked at 95 days, according to the Office of Personnel Management. The year-to-date average processing time has also continued to increase since last April. In August, the FYTD average was 78 days, compared to 76 in July and 68 days in August 2020.

Since the start of the pandemic, OPM has included a warning with its monthly retirement reports. In its latest report, the agency said that initial retirement cases produced in less than 60 days take an average of 39 days to process, while cases produced in more than 60 days take an average of 111 days – close four months.

The OPM has not returned to pre-COVID processing and staffing levels, and like many federal agencies, it still treats a large portion of the workforce working remotely. This affects both OPM’s operations and the ability of other agencies to submit complaints to OPM due to paper-based processes, for example.

The backlog of pension claims is also at record levels. The month of August recorded 28,565 complaints in the inventory, of which 8,976 were new complaints received, compared to 8,922 complaints received in July and 6,775 new complaints received a year ago.

OPM managed to process 7,412 complaints in August, compared to 6,920 complaints processed in July and more than the 5,836 complaints processed a year ago.