Philadelphia Financial Center

Background

The Philadelphia Financial Center (PFC) is one of four of Treasury’s Financial Management Service (FMS) Regional Financial Centers. PFC issues electronic funds transfer (EFT) and paper check payments on behalf of federal non-Defense agencies. PFC is responsible for the disbursement of certified public monies on behalf of approximately 160 federal civilian agencies. Some of PFC's customer agencies are the Social Security Administration (SSA), Railroad Retirement Board, Department of Labor, Department of Veteran Affairs, and the Internal Revenue Service.

The work at PFC has evolved from the relatively simple disbursement of handwritten checks into that of a major financial center, issuing payments by EFT and printing paper checks using high-speed check printers.

In Fiscal Year 2007, PFC processed over 455 million payments. Of those payments, over 377 million were EFT payments and 76 million were check payments. These payments include Social Security and Supplemental Security Income benefits, Railroad Retirement benefits, federal salary payments, and IRS tax refund payments.

PFC transfers EFT payments to the Federal Reserve System, with an ultimate destination of individuals' bank accounts. Currently, PFC issues 83% of its payments via EFT.

Since November 2000, PFC has been printing paper checks on three high-speed laser printers which can print more than 70,000 checks per hour, compared with the 12,000 check-per-hour printing capabilities of the impact printers. The impact printers have been phased out with considerable savings achieved. The digital printing and verification systems, combined in the laser printer, take the process of check and payment-related document printing to a new level of confidence and accuracy.

Once the checks are printed, they are wrapped in the envelopes and presorted to obtain postal discounts. In Fiscal Year 2007, PFC achieved over $5.7 million in postal savings as a result of presorting and bar coding.

Another area of interest at PFC is the Vault Storage Area, where checks are catalogued and held until the actual distribution date. This cataloging allows workers to pull checks manually when the agencies provide notification of death or discontinued eligibility of individual recipients. On average, PFC manually pulls about 29,500 paper check payments each month. Moreover, an additional 1.6 million check and EFT payments are electronically intercepted monthly. As a result of this process, approximately $140 million in non-entitlement payments do not have to be reclaimed each month. Avoiding reclamations also relieves an administrative burden on agencies and financial institutions.

In addition to the payment function, PFC plays an important role in federal debt collection, assisting with the administration of the Treasury Offset Program, in compliance with the Debt Collection Improvement Act of 1996.

PFC also plays a significant role in accounting functions with other agencies, as well as with gathering the information presented in the Monthly Treasury Statements.