The most common mistake is that you have applied for compensation while working and it is these groups that stand out, says Rosa Fiorito, area manager at the Insurance Agency.
Every year, the Insurance Agency pays out almost nine billion kronor in compensation for childcare to approximately 900,000 parents. Applying for compensation can be easily done digitally, and decisions are usually made based on the information provided by the guardians in the application. The applicant does not need to provide a doctor's certificate or a certificate from the employer to prove they were at home.
A system built on trust, in other words, but fraud with childcare compensation is a major problem, according to a new report from the Insurance Agency.
New Law
It is a small percentage of the population that commits crimes, but numerically, incorrect childcare payments top the Insurance Agency's statistics, even though the amounts per payment are not that high, says Rosa Fiorito.
Deliberately providing false information is a crime, and the Insurance Agency performs various types of checks both before and after payment. At the turn of the year, a new law came into effect, which means that employers must provide information to the Tax Agency when an employee is absent due to childcare.
Through these employer declarations, we will get another tool to detect and prevent benefit fraud within childcare, says Rosa Fiorito.
Uncertain Figure
According to the Insurance Agency, fraud amounts to 800 million kronor per year – a figure that is questioned by a lecturer in statistics at Uppsala University, who in Svenska Dagbladet describes the calculations as "arbitrary".
The figure comes from a government assignment that we have, which determines that we should estimate the extent of incorrect payments. An estimate is, by definition, something that is uncertain, but even if the figure is uncertain, it is a large amount, and every incorrect krona that is paid out is a problem that we need to stop, says Rosa Fiorito.
