Delays in Pension Automation Updates Led to Some Burial Transportation Benefits Being Incorrectly Processed

VBA’s Pension and Fiduciary Service, which administers the death benefits program, assists eligible claimants with burial expenses, plot costs, and transportation costs for a veteran’s remains. To streamline claims processing for death benefits, VBA launched a system called pension automation. This automation system extracts data from claim applications and documents, such as a death certificate, and uses rules to generate decisions and notification letters for claims. Given VBA’s increased reliance on automation, the VA OIG conducted this review to determine whether VBA’s automation system is accurately processing claims for death benefits. 

Based on statistical analysis of a sample of 150 claims for veterans’ death benefits completed by automation from January 5, 2023, through March 31, 2024, the OIG estimated that 83 percent of such claims contained an error, of which 2,000 claims (16 percent) resulted in about $1.9 million in underpayments to survivors. Although the automation system correctly processed most burial allowances (90 percent) and plot allowances (95 percent), the OIG team estimated that 9,800 transportation claims (79 percent) were improperly processed during the review period. The most common errors identified by the team were: the automation system prematurely denied transportation claims that should have been transferred to a claims processor to review the transportation benefit; some transportation claims were never reimbursed; and the notification letter did not provide a decision on transportation for some claims. These errors occurred because the automation system did not have rules to ensure the proper processing of transportation benefits and because of a discrepancy in VBA policy. The OIG made and the under secretary for benefits concurred with two recommendations to update VBA policy and ensure automation is consistent with the policy for processing this benefit.