Large Savings Possible In Mortgage Insurance Premium Payment System
Abstract
Much money can be saved by eliminating, reducing, or simplifying the Department of Defense (DOD) program of paying its employees' mortgage insurance premiums to the Department ofhousing and Urban Development, (HUD) Findings/Conclusions: Thesalary costs of RUD and DOD employees involved in billing and paying premiums amount to S700,000, while annual premiums paid by DOD to HUD amount to S2.6 million. To transfer funds fromDOD, HTD bills Defense individually for 31,000 premiums due annually for military personnel covered under the program. The salary costs are high because of a 20% billing error rate. billing data changes reported by DOD were not entered into HUD's billing files, causing the errors. Many bills sentt to DOD should have been sent to private mortgage companies, while others which shoul have been sent to DOD were not. Because HAD did not correct all the previous year's errors reported by DOD, about one-third of the errors in 19t4 were repeated in 1975. Recommendations: The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development should: correct the master billing files and process changes promptly; and direct that the system of billing DOD for housing insurance premiums be simplified by using, for example, a lump sum billing in lieu of about 24,000 individual billings. In addition, the Secretaries of Rousing and Urban Development and Defense should evaluate the need for continuing the program, since new programs are available to military personnel, or determine whether income eligibility criteria are needed. The results of these evaluations should be reported to the appropriate congressional committees.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 24, 1977
- Accession Number
- AD1106573
Entities
Organizations
- United States Government Accountability Office