The UN experiments with blockchain in its pension fund system

The UN has released a white paper praising the effects of blockchain technology in its pension fund system. 

Blockchain technology has steadily helped companies and organizations to improve transparency, cut costs, and reduce fraud in areas like finance, supply chains, and healthcare. Now, the United Nations is taking steps to integrate the technology more deeply into its operations after testing it within its pension system.

The UN backs blockchain technology

The United Nations stated that blockchain technology is a key tool for its digital transformation and inclusive governance strategy after a successful trial in its pension fund system.

A new white paper released by the global body concluded that blockchain provides “the ultimate technology for digital identity verification,” with the potential for the UN to now scale the technology across its agencies and promote it as a global digital public good.

The project is centered on the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund (UNJSPF), which manages retirement benefits for staff across the UN system. For decades, the pension fund has operated using a manual, paper-based process that required beneficiaries to prove their identity and confirm they are still alive.

With more than 70,000 beneficiaries in 190 countries, the system was slow, costly, and vulnerable to fraud. The reliance on physical documents often led to errors, delays, and even suspensions. It also led to around 1,400 pension payments being paused each year because of verification problems.

To address these challenges, the UN decided to utilize blockchain in partnership with the Hyperledger Foundation. The initiative was launched first in 2020, and then there was a larger rollout in 2021 when the pension fund moved to a digital certification system built on blockchain.

The UN switches from paper to blockchain

The white paper described the old pension system as “a 70-year-old process prone to error and abuse.”

Every year, the fund had to manage paper forms from tens of thousands of retirees worldwide. Staff spent hours receiving, opening, scanning, and archiving documents, and all these steps introduced opportunities for mistakes or delays.

According to the report, this change to blockchain technology improved efficiency and transparency. Beneficiaries could confirm their status digitally, while the fund gained greater confidence with fewer weak points in the system to be exploited.

“The shift away from physical documentation has substantially reduced processing times,” the UN report’s authors noted. They referred to how blockchain allowed beneficiaries to securely verify their identity and status without mailing or submitting physical paperwork, cutting down on processing times and making the system more resilient, while also eliminating repetitive checks and the risk of duplicate data entry.

The United Nation is now exploring ways to adapt the Digital Certificate of Entitlement model, which is the blockchain-based identity verification system, across its agencies and potentially share it with other international groups.

Sameer Chauhan, the director of the United Nations International Computing Centre, wrote in the paper’s conclusion that the project provided not only a technical solution but also “an operational model for how organizations across the UN family can collaborate to design secure, scalable, and inclusive digital public infrastructure.”

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