New OPM Guide Aims to Help Employees Navigate Retirement Process
The retirement services division at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has been under fire for long waits to process retirement applications. It currently takes an average of three to five months for OPM to process a claim from an employee’s official retirement date to when the retiree starts receiving their full defined benefit annuity.
To keep employees nearing retirement better informed about the process and reduce frustration, OPM released a “Retirement Quick Guide.” The guide is designed to help employees manage expectations and avoid common pitfalls throughout the retirement process.
The 3-page guide offers answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs), describes each stage of claims processing, offers estimated wait times for each stage, and provides a checklist to help make the retirement process smoother. OPM will update it each month based on processing statistics.
The guide also includes a section called “Four Things to Do Before You Retire” which includes the reminder to “sign all forms.” OPM says “missing signatures are one of the most common reasons for processing delays.” Employees are also reminded to download personal records, which is another common snag in the process, especially if the employee worked at multiple agencies.
OPM Deputy Associate Director for Retirement Services Lori Amos told reporters, “We’re paper-based. We need to manage expectations, we need to get information to our customers, because we don’t want them worried about their annuity payments. This is for today.”
OPM Backlog
Retirement processing is a slow process. OPM’s backlog stood at more than 20,000 applications at the end of April 2023. That’s below the peak of 36,349 in March 2022, but still more than OPM’s goal of 13,000 pending claims in any given month.
Besides the guide, OPM is trying to reduce the backlog through other means including:
· Asking for increased funding for retirement services in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 budget to increase staffing and update legacy IT.
· Adding a chatbot for users to ask retirement questions.
· Adding staff in retirement services call centers.
But in the interim, OPM is pinning its hopes on the new guide.
“Using these three pages, our hope is that it will reduce the amount of time it takes to process retirement claims, and ultimately, a reduction in the backlog,” said Deputy Associate Director Amos.