According to its latest monthly report, the number of retirement claims processed by the Office of Personnel Management was the most in a single month so far in 2012.
OPM processed 12,563 claims in September despite having only received 11,952 during the month. This helped to bring its total backlog down to 41,176 from 41,787 in August. So while there is still a large backlog, it is slowly coming down.
We recently conducted a survey of FedSmith.com users to ask them if they were affected by the retirement claims backlog and what their experiences were. Feedback indicated that some respondents were satisfied while others were very unhappy with the slowness of the process, but the median wait times ranged from 5 – 7 months.
Are you a federal retiree who has recently worked with OPM on your retirement claims? What was your experience like? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.
The table below shows the latest monthly figures of OPM’s retirement processing:
| Month | Projected Claims Received | Projected Claims Processed | Projected Inventory (inventory plus claims less processed) |
Actual Claims Received | Actual Claims Processed | Inventory (inventory plus claims less processed) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan-12 | 21,000 | 8,000 | 61,378 | 21,479 | 8,749 | 61,108 |
| Feb-12 | 5,600 | 8,300 | 58,678 | 6,415 | 9,953 | 57,570 |
| Mar-12 | 5,000 | 8,300 | 55,378 | 7,090 | 12,386 | 52,274 |
| Apr-12 | 8,000 | 8,300 | 55,078 | 6,770 | 8,028 | 51,016 |
| May-12 | 8,000 | 8,500 | 54,578 | 7,523 | 9,066 | 49,473 |
| Jun-12 | 8,000 | 8,500 | 54,078 | 7,814 | 8,964 | 48,323 |
| Jul-12 | 8,400 | 11,500 | 50,978 | 8,660 | 12,304 | 44,679 |
| Aug-12 | 8,000 | 11,500 | 47,478 | 8,973 | 11,865 | 41,787 |
| Sep-12 | 7,000 | 11,500 | 42,978 | 11,952 | 12,563 | 41,176 |
