SVB is working on digital life certificate
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It is always a hassle for pensioners living in Thailand, the life certificate or Attestation de Vita, which must be submitted to the SVB and the pension fund. Perhaps this hassle will soon become a lot easier.
The Borderless Foundation under One Roof (GOED) has announced that the SVB is working on a project to digitize 'The proof of being alive'. The project within the SVB is called WALDO – Worldwide Alternative Life Certificate for a Digital Government and is being carried out by Novum. The possibility of applying WALDO by means of an ID check, facial recognition and speech recognition has been tested with customers from 5 different countries Portugal, Canada, Curaçao, Turkey and Thailand.
The Social Insurance Bank (SVB) has customers who do not (or no longer) live in the Netherlands, but who are entitled to benefits. Because they live in another country, it is not always visible what the living situation of these customers is and whether they are still alive.
Customers abroad therefore receive an annual form by post, which they must use to go to a competent authority. The form is completed, signed and stamped at this authority. The customer sends the form back to the SVB, after which the payment is continued. If no form can be submitted, the payment will be stopped. This is a very cumbersome process for customers and should be possible in this day and age with all kinds of new technologies. The results have been shared with the SVB and it has been decided to proceed with the development of a digital life certificate.
You can see how this works in a video on the website of the Good Foundation: www.stichtinggoed.nl/aow/svb-digitaal-levensproof/
Thanks to Hans Bos for the tip to the editors.
If SVB knows your address, you will receive the life certificate by post every year, fill it out and send it back to SVB by post with a stamp from SOS on it.
I (Dutch, registered in Breda, NL) receive AOW and, due to my employment history in Belgium, also a little Belgian retirement pension. At the beginning of this year, I had to return a life certificate, stamped in my presence by the municipality of Breda, to the Federal Pension Service in Brussels for my Belgian retirement pension. When asked, I recently received confirmation from the Belgian pension service that this will no longer be necessary next year because the Federal Pension Service has also digitized everything and apparently short-circuited it with the SVB in NL.
So here too there is movement in simplifying the pension system.
Why not have a doctor, lawyer, or police officer sign the form again, just like before? Much simpler and much cheaper, especially in NL, where the government has a questionable reputation when it comes to IT. Moreover, a DigiD is not necessary. But yes, why would you do something simple, if you can also do it difficult?
Good development. Which authorities follow? Saves a lot of hassle and travel time.
Look how the Danes have been doing this for years. I have a small Danish Merchant Navy pension and every year I have to provide proof that I am still alive. This is done as follows: I receive an e-mail that I have to log in to the (Danish) government. There I check that I am still alive and my address details. Click submit and immediately receive a receipt as a PDF and you're done. All this without getting out of my chair. Everything goes through the computer. Now the AOW life certificate, what a misery. Am 83 yrs old and not mobile and no transport. Asked the SVB for help and advice but received no other answer than that the handing in had been postponed for a month. A Thai acquaintance drove me to the SSO, a journey of 2 hours there and 2 hours back, stopped at the door where complete strangers helped me up and down. Thanks to the unworldly SVB Roermond.
Just logging in seems too sensitive to fraud. The Netherlands would be too small if it turned out that 'Chutida/Fatima has been collecting benefits for years from her retired husband who has been dead for years'. Remote control from your own home is good, but with some checks as the SVB now wants to do (facial and speech recognition). Easier and even less susceptible to fraud than that SSO hassle (see the commenter who stated that his mother is an SSO official and has been fraudging her deceased Dutch husband's life certificate for years).
It is not “just log in” one uses Nem-ID where one inverts the Danish BSN and a password at the government. Then the number of a card that is requested. The best part is that I don't have to leave the house.
If you have someone in your home who has that information, they can easily pretend to be you, right? You tell your partner your (Danish) BSN, password and March number, you die, but your partner can still make money in logge for years to come.
For the same reason, the system that Maarten cites does not work: just make a scribble with a cop or lawyer.. easy yes, but if a partner, friend or neighbor has the data of the Dutchman and a corrupt officer knows, then the proof of life is very easy to cheat with.
Appearing digitally with your own real face and voice therefore seems to me to be the only modern option that is not as susceptible to fraud and saves the Netherlands a long travel time.
The SSO can also be cheated. The problem is that the SVB assumes fraud, while only a very small percentage of the people who appeal to these authorities commit fraud. We're all suspects, apparently. A government based on this is no better than any totalitarian regime.
Also in this case: “As the innkeeper is, he trusts his guests”.
Digitally fine, but keep it simple. The more complicated, the easier to hack, a top hacker explained to me.
Bringing the honorary consul back to life may also be a solution. Centralization almost always leads to abuse of power and excessive regulation, something we are already experiencing the consequences of.
As for the DigiD. A double check via email works just as well as via SMS. Many agencies give both options. Google, Amazon and Apple do the same.
Rob V, this is the problem with the Netherlands, paranoid and seeing hackers everywhere. When you log in to the Danish government, you have to wait because everything is checked, then you can continue. If one dies, this is passed on to the Embassy, which passes this on to the Netherlands. Then all member states of the EU will be notified and the pension will be stopped. I can also email with the Danish government, tax and the bank.
Has anyone read GOED's cookie policy yet? I can recommend because even Google Analytics participates in this. Quite a commercial whole, by the way. Smarties! I just interrupted it! Has anyone checked with the SVB as it might as well be Fake or Fakish!
By the way, the ADV game has already become considerably easier because almost all PFs now accept the SVB ADV form and that saves a lot of hassle.
The ADV form is also sent by post, which is also something from the past and that can also be easily converted into a digital form. I advise everyone to keep a correspondence address in the Netherlands as long as this is still the case.
For example, a PME ADV form was recently sent to me by letter while we were on holiday in Thailand and the benefit was therefore stopped for a while! Can't I get an email for that as an announcement I asked in my innocence? No we can't was the answer! And then I think: can't do it again! In the meantime I was able to solve this by getting the SVB ADV form accepted by PME. This also applies to the PMT, among other things. I would take that up with your PF and it will probably be accepted. So make a scan of the SVB ADV form and pass it on to your PF.
I can download and print the life certificate every year via my SVB. Complete this and send it to SSO to have it checked, including attachments (copy of passport, partner ID, etc.) and signature and stamp of the SSO. Then upload the signed documents in my SVB to SVB. About 7 to 10 days later you will receive a message confirming that everything has been processed. So no trip to the post office.
You must have a Digid to be able to log in to my SVB.
Leo P
Watched video of Waldo. 74% chance of a match, so 26% chance of error. That is an unacceptable scoring percentage. As a result, I estimate that many elderly people will get into trouble if the App does not work and that is not the first time with the government and DigiD.
Great to read that the proof of identity and income forms are all so easy to download. There is only 1 but. All pre-printed data will be deleted. And now you have to fill this in yourself. And that is already a difficult task. To fill in all that information in such a small block. I have to deal with this problem almost every year. Because the forms sent by the SVB rarely arrive... Sometimes the privacy rules go way too far. And Who can solve that misery? Especially the older people. So it will be fantastic if this procedure becomes a lot easier for the elderly. And it is also time to make the rules a lot easier for this large group of elderly people. I have still not received the documents that were sent by post in 2019. Strange isn't it. Yes, I am of that opinion too. I did receive the blank forms sent by email. And then the trouble began to get everything written in the narrow blocks. It's a painstaking job. At the SVB it's just like at the tax office. We can't make it more fun, but we can make it more difficult. So it would be very welcome if we could take a good digital step forward. Kind regards: Thailand John.