Reporting procedures
Paying agent reporting procedure – netPension® ZMV
An ongoing dialogue between paying agent, health insurance fund and ITSG – not a one-off data exchange. netPension® ZMV conducts it for you: encrypted, on time and traceable for every single pension benefit.
Certified by the ITSG · available as a standalone product – on-premise or as a SaaS solution
What is it?
The paying agent reporting procedure, briefly explained.
The paying agent reporting procedure is used to transmit social security reports and contribution statements from paying agents to the statutory health insurers. Since 1 January 2006, parties obliged to report have been required to transmit social security reports and contribution statements exclusively in encrypted electronic form to the data receiving and distribution offices; since 1 January 2009, this has also applied to reports for contribution collection. For paying agents themselves, the automated procedure has been mandatory since 1 January 2011.
A paying agent in this sense is any institution that pays out pension benefits – a pension institution as well as a pension fund, an insurance company or an occupational pension administration. The technical communication partner is the ITSG.
Reference unit
The focus is on the individual pension benefit.
Not the pensioner and not the report: all reports and feedback always relate to exactly one identified pension benefit. If someone receives two benefits, two separate dialogues run.
Uniquely identified by
Four attributes.
Insurance number (VSNR)
Health insurance fund (BBNRKK)
Paying agent number (BBNRVU)
File reference of the pension benefit (AZVU)
Since 1 January 2024, the file reference has been a mandatory part of the identification.
Life cycle
A pension benefit passes through five states.
01
Not reported
The pension benefit does not yet exist or has not yet been notified to the health insurance fund. The fund has no information on contribution liability.
02
Advance certificate – optional
Before payment begins, the paying agent can request the contribution attributes: personal data, planned start, expected payment amount and type of pension benefit are sent to the fund, which responds with the expected contribution attributes. The advance certificate does not replace the later start report.
03
Actively reported
The start report follows with the first payment. The health insurance fund checks the insurance relationship, responsibility, contribution liability, allowances as well as health and long-term care insurance and transmits the valid contribution attributes.
04
Changed
A pension adjustment, a changed payment amount, changed attributes or corrections to data already reported lead to a change report. The benefit remains active but receives a new technical characteristic.
05
Ended
Death, full capitalisation, end of entitlement or transfer to another benefit: the end report completes the life cycle.
Stream A
What the paying agent reports.
Reporting reason · Trigger
MG 5 · Advance certificate
Request contribution attributes before the first paymentMG 1 · Start
First payment or resumption after a previous endMG 2 · Change
Pension adjustment, changed payment amount, changed attributesMG 3 · End
Discontinuation, capitalisation, death, switch to another benefit
Stream B
What the health insurance fund reports back.
Feedback · Meaning
RM 1
Contribution liability established: allowance, contribution rate, health and long-term care insurance attributes, validity periodRM 2
Change in contribution attributes – such as a change of fund, a change of status or a new allowanceRM 3
End of contribution liabilityRM 4
Rejection or need for clarification: insured person unknown, incorrect VSNR, fund not responsibleRM 5 to 9
Advance certificates, corrections, technical procedure information, special cases
The two streams are independent of each other. The health insurance fund can transmit new contribution attributes at any time – even without the paying agent having reported anything. The contribution calculation must respond to this, not the other way round.
In netPension® ZMV
The whole dialogue, not just the sending.
The reports are generated from the benefit data that is already in the system. Anyone who uses netPension® as their pension administration system reports without entering data twice – and anyone who only uses the ZMV takes over the data from their own core application via an interface.
Import and validation of the data from the core application
Creation and encrypted sending of the report files
Importing and processing of feedback
Records reconciliation between paying agent and health insurance funds
Calculation of the pension benefit maximum
Logs and overviews of all reports and feedback
Maintenance of health insurance fund master data, their contribution rates and their data receiving offices
Certified by the ITSG – encryption included.
netPension® ZMV is certified by the ITSG. Data is exchanged via dakota, the software for secure communication between paying agents and statutory health insurance funds. All payload data is encrypted before sending. With the licence for netPension® ZMV, you also acquire the client licence for dakota – there are no additional licence fees. dakota is installed once and remains largely invisible during operation.
Even without changing systems
netPension® ZMV is a product in its own right.
The paying agent reporting procedure can be purchased separately – on-premise in your own data centre or as a SaaS solution. You keep your pension administration system and only use the reporting procedure; the data comes from your core application via an interface. Both operating modes have the same range of features; they differ only in who operates the infrastructure.
01
Dedicated client environment
A dedicated environment is set up for each paying agent: infrastructure, database, technical interfaces as well as security and monitoring components. The platform is multi-client capable – several paying agents run on shared infrastructure with complete separation of their data.
02
Functional set-up
The paying agent number, organisational data and contact persons are recorded, users, roles and permissions are set up, and reporting parameters, communication channels and validation rules are configured. Existing pension recipients, pension benefits and historical reporting data can be taken over from previous systems – so an ongoing reporting procedure is continued seamlessly.
03
Testing and commissioning
Before productive operation, registration with the communication services, transmission of test reports, processing of feedback as well as functional settings and permissions are accepted.
04
Operation
Infrastructure, updates, data backup, availability monitoring and maintenance are our responsibility. Legal changes and new versions are provided centrally – you always work with the latest version and concentrate on the procedure itself.
The four steps describe the SaaS set-up. With the on-premise variant, step 01 is omitted and the application is installed in your own environment instead; steps 02 and 03 remain identical, and you handle operation in step 04 yourself. SaaS and on-premise compared
Would you like to see how this would look for you?
We show you netPension® along the lines of your questions – no slides, but the running software. Give us a call or request a demo.