As early as 2019, the Swedish Pensions Agency received criticism from the Ombudsman for its long processing times for housing supplements. Despite several investments in recent years, processing times are still long and the number of pending cases is increasing, shows a new report from the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (ISF).
Gets a problem
Last year, the average processing time for new applications was 96 days, which is significantly longer than the government’s target of 40 days.
“The long processing times mean that pensioners have to wait a long time to receive their housing supplement. They can also lead to incorrect payments and to pensioners later being obliged to repay money. This poses problems for pensioners with weak finances “, says Louise Malmgren, project manager at ISF, in a press release.
Sees risks
In order to overcome the problems, the Swedish Pensions Agency has introduced a new way of working which means that the administrators prioritize cases where the pensioners themselves call in and try to close the case. But it is unclear how the working method affects the processing time for all cases, even in cases where the pensioner does not call in himself.
ISF sees risks with the working method and believes that it should be evaluated and that the authority needs to allocate more resources to reduce the large number of cases. ISF also wants the government to investigate whether it is possible to simplify the regulations so that the housing supplement is easier to handle.