TN 25 (11-05)

A. Policy

To intercept a payment, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City (FRBKC) removes it from the payment file before sending the file to the central or processor bank. There are basically two processes for intercepting IDD payments.

1. Intercept Request Coded on International Treasury Services ITS.gov

An authorized SSA or Embassy employee, or an employee at FRBKC, codes the intercept request on the beneficiary’s ITS.gov record. This is done by placing the death or other reason on the Enrollment Status pull-down menu through View/Update.

FRBKC then intercepts the payment based on the ITS.gov information. For any reason other than death, the employee must then remove the code from the ITS.gov record as soon as the situation causing the intercept request has been corrected. Otherwise all subsequent payments will be automatically intercepted.

When death information has been coded erroneously to ITS.gov for a beneficiary, the death information must be removed from ITS.gov after the beneficiary has been determined to be alive. FRBKC must also be informed, so that subsequent payments will not be intercepted.

a. Example 1

Information to correct the direct deposit coding for a payment was received and input after the cutoff. To avoid having the payment go to someone else’s account, the FBU coded an intercept request on ITS.gov. FRBKC intercepted the payment and returned it to SSA.. A PMA payment then went out with the corrected direct deposit data. The FBU removed the intercept request from ITS.gov.

b. Example 2

A payment was intercepted with reason “closed account.” The coder input new information to the MBR but forgot to remove the request from ITS.gov, and two more payments were intercepted before the error was corrected. The intercept information was removed from ITS.gov and the next payment went to the new account.

c. Example 3

Mr. Romano reported that his wife had died, but the coder misunderstood the message and erroneously coded the death to Mr. Romano’s ITS.gov record. When Mr. Romano notified the FBU of his nonreceipt the following month, the FBU removed the death information from Mr. Romano’s ITS.gov record, correctly coded the death of Mrs. Romano, and notified FRBKC and OEIO of the corrections. OEIO corrected SSA’s Master Beneficiary Record and released a payment for Mr. Romano.

2. Bank Match

For some countries, FRBKC matches SSA’s payment file against the file of bank data provided by the processor bank. FRBKC then intercepts and returns the rejected payments. FRBKC also intercepts and returns any multicountry payments that have either no country code or an unacceptable country code.

a. Example 1

A Canadian payment is intercepted because the bank code does not match any Canadian bank/transit code on file.

b. Example 2

A payment with prefix 66 shows a country code of C. Since there is no country code of C for prefix 66, the payment is intercepted.

B. Procedure – Request an Intercept

All intercept requests must be coded on ITS.gov. Take the following steps:

1. Go to ITS.gov and click on View/Update.

2. Key the ID information for the beneficiary and click on Search.

3. When the information comes up, click on the pencil for Update.

4. When the beneficiary’s information page comes up, go to Enrollment Status and select “IDD Stop Payment” from the pull-down menu.

5. Select the correct reason for the intercept from the resulting pull-down list. If the reason is the death of either the beneficiary or the representative payee, put the date of death in the Event box in YYYY-MM-DD format.

6. Click on Update.

7. Click on “Recipient List” at top right to close the record.

IMPORTANT: You must also input the death to SSA’s systems.

C. Procedure – When a Payment Has Been Intercepted

1. Bank Match Rejects

When you discover that a payment has been intercepted (or when you have requested an Intercept), make every effort to correct the direct deposit data. This is especially important when someone reports nonreceipt and you find that the payment has been returned.

Examine the data to see what is needed. A Canadian payment may be lacking the institution number, for example. One digit may have been left out of a Polish account number, making it the incorrect length. The beneficiary may need to give you the full, correct data. The location of IDD coding instructions for each country is on a chart in GN 02402.220D.

If the payment has not yet been returned for a nonreceipt case, you may be able to obtain the correct data when the beneficiary reports the problem. Then when the payment is returned, it will be sent correctly to the account.

2. Payment Intercepted by Request

All of the instructions in GN 02402.235B. apply, but there is one extra step to take. Remove the intercept information from the record on ITS.gov as soon as there are no further incorrect payments to intercept. Otherwise the beneficiary will continue not to be paid and will go into suspense for incorrect address when the payments are returned to SSA.

3. Erroneous Death

When a death has been erroneously applied to the record, go to Enrollment Status on ITS.gov and remove the Stop Payment Code and Event date. Notify FRBKC to stop any IDD reclamation action on this case. In addition, make all necessary inputs to correct the erroneous death information on SSA’s systems. See GN 02602.055C. for full particulars about the different systems that must be corrected.

If any payments after the erroneous date of death were to a U.S. financial institution (FI) routing number, follow GN 02408.700 and GN 02408.800 to reverse any automated or manual reclamations that have been requested.