Data Input Errors Cut Pension Benefits by 2 billion yen

March 27, 2018

Tokyo- Data input errors by an information processing company resulted in reduced public pension benefit payments to some 104,000 pensioners in Japan in February, totaling about 2 billion yen, officials at the Japan Pension Service said Monday.

The Japan Pension Service, which operates public pension service, will make adjustments to the benefits of the affected pensioners by the time April payments are made.

The information processing company, based in Tokyo, has been contracted by the Japan Pension Service to input personal information for some 13 million pensioners.

An examination by the pension service operator found that data input errors by the company related to income deduction applications affected pension benefits for some 149,000 pensioners. Of them, 104,000 pensioners received lower amounts of benefits than they were entitled to.

In payments made in February that were for pension benefits for December last year and January this year, benefit payments were lowered by up to 50,000 yen per pensioner due to the data input errors.

By contrast, some 45,000 pensioners received higher amounts of benefits than they were entitled to, totaling 80 million yen, with some pensioners receiving as much as 10,000 yen more than the correct amounts.

The company did not conduct data input work by workers in pairs, in breach of the contract, the Japan Pension Service officials said.

Starting fiscal 2017, which ends Saturday, application forms for tax deductions for some pensioners became more complicated. As a result, some additional 1.2 million pensioners received lower amounts of benefits in February than they were entitled to. Jiji Press