The Social Security Administration (SSA) is mandated by law and regulations to obtain
specific information from the organization before authorizing them to serve as Fee-for-Service
(FFS) representative payees.
To strengthen the investigation process for FFS payees, we obtain credit information
about the potential FFS organizational payees from Dun & Bradstreet (D&B). SSA contracts
with D&B to provide credit information on new non-governmental FFS organizational
representative payees. We do not require credit reports for state or local governmental
organizations.
The information we obtain in these credit reports provides SSA with a better understanding
of potential risk factors of representative payee business losses due to fraud, failure,
or severe delinquency. The credit report information may provide an indication of
any risk involved in the organization’s current or future performance as a representative
payee.