A joint study conducted by National Seniors Australia and Retirement Essentials, which surveyed around 4,500 seniors, found that less than four in 10 seniors were satisfied with the current age pension application process.
Specifically, the study found that 88 per cent of people in the survey were dissatisfied with the age pension application forms and processes.
Retirement Essentials chief executive Paul Rogan said that if the survey data is reflective of the whole community, then based on demographic trends, over 153,000 Australian seniors each year are having a negative experience when applying for the pension.
Mr Rogan said this is significant because of the practical impact on vulnerable individuals.
“Beyond those who are simply frustrated, there are many eligible people who actually give up on accessing their entitlements,” the CEO said.
“When the purpose of the age pension is to be a safety net, we need to do more to assist seniors to navigate the complex process and support them.”
Retirement Essentials has also announced the launch of a new service for helping seniors apply for the age pension which combines a website with an accessible telephone service.
“We worked with seniors to better understand how they prefer to interact with technology and we quickly learnt that a hybrid service that links good old-fashioned customer service with human-centred technology would work best,” Mr Rogan said.
“We believe every Australian should be able to access affordable support when they reach retirement age, which is why we have worked with everyday seniors to design an age pension service that helps them secure their entitlements with confidence.”
As a retired adviser, I can say during my career I had to assist may new retirees to obtain the partial or full age pension. The process is a disgrace and without a doubt in my mind that all age pensioners are treated as criminals who are only out to defraud Centrelink. Centrelink staff seem to treat Age Pension applicants as though it is the staff’s money and they don’t want to part with it. They do this by endless requests for useless pieces of information that are a complete waste of time. Then the stalling starts. I had one couple in tears because they had run out of money when explaining this to the Centrelink staffer, she didn’t seem to understand or care. This situation needs to be completely overhauled. We need a system like the Kiwis have where everyone automatically receives a pension and then any income on top of that is taxable. This provides an incentive to keep working well past 65 because the tax is lower than someone in the middle-income bracket. For those that cannot work the safety net is always there without a “Centrelink style Gestapo” Asking you to repeatedly update your assets and income.
The time and costs wasted for our advice admin team on Centrelink Age Pension is a joke.
We should send Centrelink a $25K pa invoice for our wasted time over and above what we need to help advice and administer Age Pensions for our retiree clients.
Centrelink services are a JOKE – a VERY BAD JOKE !!!!!