PERS Service Retirement is working diligently to process the backlog of retirement applications, working long hours and on weekends.
The transition to the new processing system was successful, however, as expected with any conversion/migration there is a learning curve and there have been a few “hiccups”.
Under normal circumstances, application processing takes 90 days from the day an application is received. In our current situation, applications submitted from March 1 to June 30 are taking up to 120 days to process, which we hope will decrease as time passes and staff gets up to speed on the new system. It is important to understand that these are extraordinary circumstances and not PERS normal way of doing business.
We have updated our website <http://www.pers.ms.gov/> with messaging about this process and where we are in the backlog. Each Monday we will post the “submitted the week of” date for the applications we are currently processing. Having this date posted should provide better clarity to our members as to where their application is in the retirement process.