{"id":263087,"date":"2026-01-29T05:00:33","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T05:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/263087\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T05:00:33","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T05:00:33","slug":"hundreds-of-pensions-affected-by-it-error","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/263087\/","title":{"rendered":"Hundreds of pensions affected by IT error"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"72222257<\/p>\n

\nPhoto: 123RF\n<\/p>\n

About 200 pensioners have had the amount they receive in NZ Super affected this week because of a problem with the Ministry of Social Development’s IT system.<\/p>\n

One man who contacted RNZ said he had been receiving NZ Super for more than 10 years, as well as a small proportion from Canada because he had worked there briefly.<\/p>\n

But his NZ Super payment did not arrive on Monday.<\/p>\n

When he called to ask what had happened, he was told there was a system error and everyone receiving Canadian or Netherlands pensions had their NZ Super suspended.<\/p>\n

Paula Ratahi-O’Neill, the ministry’s general manger of centralised services, said it was working urgently to fix a fault that affected people receiving overseas pensions.<\/p>\n

“The fault was in the IT system that updates overseas pension rates. It has caused a small group of people to have their NZ Super payments incorrectly assessed.<\/p>\n

“This has led to some payments being suspended, and in other cases incorrect payments being made.<\/p>\n

“We estimate that around 200 clients receiving overseas pensions have been affected. We will continue to monitor numbers.<\/p>\n

“We are working with urgency to fix these payments and will be paying amounts owing to people by Friday. We apologise to those impacted by this fault.”<\/p>\n

She said the ministry’s technical team was working “at speed” to stop other payments being affected and a data fix should be released by Monday.<\/p>\n

Some overseas pensions that are deemed to be similar to New Zealand’s system offset NZ Super.<\/p>\n

For every dollar people get from an overseas pension, their New Zealand payment is reduced by one dollar.<\/p>\n

According to the government’s website, to count as a pension that offsets NZ Super, the pension needs to be part of a programme providing pensions or benefits, cover something that NZ pensions and benefits cover, such as old age or disability, and be administered by or on behalf of a country’s government.<\/p>\n

Voluntary savings schemes generally were not included.<\/p>\n

Sign up for Money with Susan Edmunds<\/a>, a weekly newsletter covering all the things that affect how we make, spend and invest money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo: 123RF About 200 pensioners have had the amount they receive in NZ Super affected this week because…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263088,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[964,114,904,268,85,46,43,266,267,965,963,961,962],"class_list":{"0":"post-263087","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-current-affairs","11":"tag-finance","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-personal-finance","16":"tag-personalfinance","17":"tag-podcasts","18":"tag-public-radio","19":"tag-radio-new-zealand","20":"tag-rnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}