All about information matching
Here at Work and Income, our role is to help you find work and gain independence. And to help you along the way we provide you with income support.
If you’re on income support, it’s very important you tell us straight away if your situation changes in any way – like if you go overseas or start working. If you don’t, you’re committing benefit fraud. One of the ways we find benefit fraud is through information matching.
This is a general guide to how we match records to find benefit fraud. If you want to know more, call us free on 0800 909 333.
What is information matching?
This is when we compare records with other Government agencies and organisations.
If we find something that we need to investigate we’ll check our files first to see if you’ve told us about the change in your situation. If you haven’t told us, we’ll contact you and start our investigation.
Who do we match with?
- Inland Revenue – to check if you’re working or getting more income than you’ve told us about.
- New Zealand Customs – to check if you’ve gone overseas.
- Department of Corrections – to check if you’ve gone to prison.
- Department for Courts – for addresses and other personal information.
- Overseas social security agencies – to check if you qualify for an overseas benefit or pension.
- Organisations like banks, employers and study institutions – for a variety of information.
