National Insurance number as reference

Charade

Greetings and apologies if this is answered elsewhere - I've searched but cannot find a duplicate.

Anyway, since approaching my 65th birthday, I've had various letters, forms and phone calls from the Pension Service. So far so good.

For all the various replies given when on the phone they ask security questions such as National Insurance number, phone number, name (obviously), marital status and so on.

All letters sent to me from them have my National Insurance number as "Your reference" to be quoted "if you get in touch with us. Fine, I don't have a problem with that.

Today I've received my paper statement from the bank in the post and the pension payment has my National Insurance number as the payment reference.

I rang the Pension Service and the young lady said that using the NI number it's usual. I pointed out that my posted paper statement had my name address and NI number on it - answering three of the five security questions she asked (the fourth and fifth being marital status and wife's full name - the local electoral roll could give that information).

Sorry, rambling again. When I pointed out that using the NI number as a payment reference makes Identity theft a lot easier as things do get lost in the post. She said I need to talk to the Payments department. She couldn't give me a number as "they don't take calls" but she could send them an email and ask them to ring me - in 5 to 10 working days.

I commented that that wasn't really good enough, so she said she would mark it urgent in which case they should ring me in 5 to 5 working days. I left it at that.

I'll wait to see what happens before raising a complaint.

Now the point of all this waffle.

1. Does any one else have their NI number as their pension payments reference - in other words is this normal?
2. Am I making a mountain out of the proverbial?

AndyW

ps - Thanks, I feel better now getting that off my chest

BoGoF

1) Yes
2) Yes

greenglide

The NINO is not "secret".


DWP payments of benefits always use the NINO as the reference followed by a two or three benefit code (SP, WFP etc).


This is not the end of the world.


The actual issue is the the DWP (and government in general) have nothing to use as a "secret" to perform an identity check, the NINO is not really suitable anyway, too many people / organisations have access to this.

Charade

Thanks for the replies.

Fair enough, it's just that other Governments departments (and ironically the Pension service initial information letter to me) use *** for the first 4 number/letters.

Greenglide, I agree that they don't have many "secrets" to ask; I don't mind having my NI number banded about by departments that require it BUT using the full number on a 3rd party document stored and issued (ordinary insecure post) by a 3rd party company (in this case the bank) is a little too much for me. How many companies/banks have been hacked or had computer problems lately, losing account numbers, bank details, password and, who knows, possibly beNI numbers.

OK, maybe it's just me. Still, I'll be interested to hear what, if anything, they have to say.



AndyW

Malthusian

If a fraudster successfully rang up the DWP and convinced them to pay your State Pension into their bank account, you would lose nothing. The DWP would still owe you the money. As soon as you realised the money hadn't appeared (which you hopefully would, and it's the individual's responsibility to claim benefits they're entitled to), the mistake would be corrected.

It's the DWP's problem.

Silvertabby

Malthusian wrote: »

If a fraudster successfully rang up the DWP and convinced them to pay your State Pension into their bank account, you would lose nothing. The DWP would still owe you the money. As soon as you realised the money hadn't appeared (which you hopefully would, and it's the individual's responsibility to claim benefits they're entitled to), the mistake would be corrected.

It's the DWP's problem.

Yes, but it wouldn't be sorted straight away - DWP would have to rule out any collusion between the pensioner and the fraudster.

squirrelpie

I agree with Charade that there seems to be a lack of joined-up thinking, with DWP using the number as a reference, whilst the tax office carefully obscure it. But it does occur in full on a lot of other documents too, such as payslips.