Social insurance coverage in international mobility – checks by the Swedish Social Insurance Agency and the Swedish Pensions Agency

The Swedish National Audit Office’s overall conclusion is that government agencies’ checks to verify individuals’ social insurance coverage are not sufficiently effective. The Swedish National Audit Office considers that there are some deficiencies along the entire decision-making chain, from control mechanisms when examining entitlement to benefits, to post-payment checks. All in all, these deficiencies lead to undue payments that could otherwise have been prevented or detected.

• Government agencies’ control mechanisms when examining entitlement to benefits are largely based on the assumption that existing registers such as population registers and agencies’ own registers reflect actual circumstances in cross-border mobility, which is not always the case.
• Government agencies’ control mechanisms during the disbursement period are largely reliant on individuals’ obligation to report altered circumstances and on external information.
• The Swedish Social Insurance Agency does not guarantee that its processes function as intended in cases of immigration and deregistration. As a consequence, not all immigrant families with children are examined for their entitlement to ordinary child allowance, and individuals who are deregistered from social insurance in Sweden continue to receive benefits.
• Post-payment checks are initiated mainly based on external indications and, to a lesser extent, on risk-based or targeted checks.

At the same time, the Swedish National Audit Office notes that the Swedish Social Insurance Agency and the Swedish Pensions Agency’s exchange of information with the Swedish Migration Agency has improved considerably in recent years. The Swedish Social Insurance Agency has also developed fully automated checks to ensure that third-country nationals have a legal right to stay in Sweden when examining their entitlement to parental benefit. The Swedish National Audit Office considers that other benefits at the Swedish Social Insurance Agency should follow suit in these development efforts. However, the Swedish Pensions Agency’s automated checks of legal residency do not use data directly from the Swedish Migration Agency, which heightens the risk of undue payments.

The Swedish National Audit Office further notes that government agencies lack the means to effectively counteract certain risks of undue payments, for example in the case of non-reported stays abroad that may affect social insurance coverage. Government agencies’ possibility and obligation to share information, which may be of significance in preventing undue payments, has recently been expanded by legislative regulation. Nonetheless, they lack certain information from other agencies and entities that could make the checks more effective. An expansion of government agencies’ existing access to bank data could be a way to better enable them to detect and limit undue payments linked to international mobility through post-payment checks. The Swedish National Audit Office notes that, in a referral to the Council on Legislation for consideration, the Government has proposed legislative amendments that include enabling the Swedish Social Insurance Agency and the Swedish Pensions Agency to retrieve data from banks for more purposes than currently. The Swedish National Audit Office assesses that a proposal to that end could help improve the effectiveness of the checks performed by the Swedish Social Insurance Agency and the Swedish Pensions Agency on social insurance coverage.

Finally, the Swedish National Audit Office notes that individuals are required by law to report certain circumstances to the Swedish Social Insurance Agency, which the latter does not use in any way. This leads to unnecessary work for both individuals and the Swedish Social Insurance Agency. Simplifying regulations could clarify what information is relevant to report.