Retirement Backlog Falls to 2015 Low in October

The backlog of federal retirement claims fell in October to its lowest point this year, according to statistics released by the Office of Personnel Management on Thursday.

Unprocessed retirement claims stood at 12,642 at the end of last month, down more than 2,000 from September. It marked the first time since December the backlog fell below 14,000, following the annual surge of claims filed by retiring federal employees at the beginning of each year.

The number of feds filing retirement claims spiked by nearly one-third last month, but OPM processed about 2,500 more claims in October than in September. OPM fell short of its projection for the month, forecasting it would have cut the backlog to just more than 10,000 by the end of October.

OPM processed 74 percent of retirement claims within 60 days. Of those, the processing took an average of 38 days. Of the applications that took more than 60 days to close out, OPM spent an average of 86 days completing them. In October 2014 and much of last year, OPM processed more than 80 percent of claims in fewer than 60 days.

Ken Zawodny, OPM associate director of retirement services, told reporters most of the cases that took more than 60 days to process were prolonged by the need to ascertain more information from annuitants. Zawodny encouraged retires to ensure all their files are up to date in the years leading up to their retirement.

OPM had originally set the goal of eliminating the retirement backlog entirely by the summer of 2013, but sequestration forced the agency to scale back its ambitions. Now, Zawodny admits OPM will never fully eliminate the backlog as there will always be cases that take time to process.

The agency is making more information available -- namely the average processing times for cases that take more or less than 60 days -- to give federal workers a better idea of how long it takes to process a claim. Retirees generally receive estimated annuity checks while OPM is handling their claims. 

(Image via cigdem / Shutterstock.com)