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Hello everyone, I'm Ian Smith with
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fedsmith.com and I wanted to bring you a
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quick update on the status of the
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backlog of retirement claims at the
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Office of Personnel Management. OPM just
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released their latest monthly processing
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the backlog is going in the right
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direction. That's the good news. It's
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now down under 50,000 total claims,
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which is still a lot. It's still very
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high, but when you consider that it hit
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a record high in February when it uh
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topped, let's see, 65,000
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total claims. It was at 65,237
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This is a significant improvement. So, I
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just wanted to bring you a a quick
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update and give you some of the the
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basic figures. I'm not going to get real
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real in-depth on the numbers. If you're
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a numbers person and you like going into
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a lot of detail, I've written an article
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on this and I put a lot more data and
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and facts and information in there. So,
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please check that out. In April, uh the
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total backlog of retirement claims was
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cut by 10% over the end of March. It now
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new retirement applications came in
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during uh the month of April. Again,
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that is still a lot, but when you look
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at the past months, uh you'll see here
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that it has been a lot higher.
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And OPM processed quite a few more
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retirement claims than it took in as
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well, as you can see from the figures
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cases were processed last month, which
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is is quite a bit. Um not as many as in
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in March and February, certainly,
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but collectively it it has helped bring
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the the total inventory of outstanding
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claims down considerably. OPM noted that
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the average number of days it's taking
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to process the paper claims in April was
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100 days, which is double the amount of
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time it was taking to process the
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digital claims because that only took 50
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days. The one other thing I did want to
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point out though is OPM also provided
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some information for how long the
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process is currently expected to take.
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This is obviously going to be important
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for new federal retirees who have
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recently submitted applications or who
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will be retiring soon. According to OPM,
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the current estimate is that interim pay
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will be issued within nine days of
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receipt of OPM receiving a complete
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retirement application.
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And interim pay is about 60 to 80% of
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the final full annuity that you'll get
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once your retirement application is
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fully processed. And according to OPM's
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the timeline for the full retirement
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process is that it's taking about three
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to five months on average. So, that's a
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quick update on the status of the
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retirement processing at OPM.
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Um like I said, I I have written an
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article on this. I go into much more
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detail if you'd like additional tables
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and data points about the history of of
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where the backlog stands now versus um
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earlier in the fiscal year.
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But, it is OPM is continuing to make
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meaningful progress, which is good to
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see. And this is now the second straight
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month in a row that it has been cut.
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Thank you for watching and have a good
