One in four applications for pensions is rejected – 4-year record

By Dimitris Katsaganis

A record not only in the issuance of new definitive main pensions, but also in those applications which were rejected or “closed” without a decision – as a percentage of the total number of applications cleared – was recorded this year.

In particular, more than one in four applications went “out”, as it did not meet the conditions in order to take the road of approval. In fact, this record is due to the launch of cases that “closed” without a decision.

This is revealed by the data presented in the latest report of the “Atlas” system for pensions.

Specifically, in the first quarter of 2022, the percentage of applications that were either rejected or “closed” without a decision (due to lack of supporting documents, etc.) reached 27% of all applications that were cleared.

More specifically, in the period January – March 2022, they were rejected or “closed” without a decision 16,865. A total of 61,864 applications were cleared. Thus, 27% of the applications were “out” (16,865 out of a total of 61,864).

This percentage is the highest since 2019. The truth is, based on what emerges from the data of the “Atlas” system, in the first quarter of 2021, 15% of applications went out (7,970 out of a total of 52,111 applications that were cleared) .

In the corresponding period of 2020, only 11% of the applications were rejected or “closed” without a decision, while in 2019 – 21%. and then its increase in 2020-2021) does not concern only the first trimester of each year, but its entire 12 months.

The second important element is that the launch of the total percentage of rejected – “closed” cases in the first quarter of 2022 in relation to the respective quarters of 2019-2021 and especially 2020-2021 is overwhelmingly due to the launch of cases closed without a decision .

Specifically, while the percentage of rejected decisions (on the total number of applications that were cleared in the first quarter) starts from 5.7% in 2019, rises to 6.5% in 2020, falls again to 5.7% in 2021 to grow again, very little to 6.6% in 2022.

In other words, the percentage of rejected applications in the period 2019-2022 remains more or less constant.

The course of the applications that were closed without a decision is completely different. In 2019 they amounted to 14.6% (of the total cleared applications), in 2020 they fell to 5.8%, in 2021 they rose to 7.6% to jump to 19.6% in 2022.