Every year, pension funds around the world send money to people who are dead.
A pensioner passes away, the death isn't reported in time, and the monthly transfer keeps going. For government funds managing millions of beneficiaries, even a small fraction of delayed reports adds up to a real liability.
The Philippines Social Security System (SSS) has been dealing with this for years through its Annual Confirmation of Pensioners (ACOP) program, which requires certain pensioners to confirm they're still alive each year to keep receiving their benefits. In March 2026, the SSS added a new way to do that: facial recognition with liveness detection, available through its online platform. You can read the official SSS announcement here.
What is ACOP and why it exists
The SSS established ACOP to protect the pension fund from fraudulent claims where benefits continue flowing after a pensioner has died, particularly for surviving spouses. Pensioners covered by the requirement include retirees aged 80 and above, those living with disabilities, survivor pensioners, and dependent minors. These are also the groups that find in-person compliance the hardest.
Before the biometric option existed, pensioners had to show up in person or submit physical documents to prove they were still alive. The process worked, but it put the burden almost entirely on people who are often elderly, sometimes disabled, and not always close to an SSS branch.
The new system doesn't replace the paper route. Physical documents are still accepted. But pensioners who can verify digitally now have a faster option that doesn't require leaving home. According to the SSS, the whole process takes under a minute and updates records immediately.
What liveness detection is doing here
Facial recognition on its own wouldn't be enough. A printed photo of a deceased pensioner could defeat a simple face-match check. Liveness detection is what closes that gap.
The system captures a selfie in real time and checks that what the camera sees is an actual person present at that moment, not a photo, a screen replay, or a video clip. It analyzes depth, natural movement, and other cues that can't be faked by holding up an image. Once presence is confirmed, the biometric is matched against the record on file via the Philippine Statistics Authority's National ID eVerify system.
For a presence verification use case, this is the right fit. The entire point is to confirm that a specific person is alive and present at the time of verification, which is exactly what liveness detection does. It's the same technology behind Authsignal's biometric authentication, powered in part through the partnership with iProov, whose Genuine Presence Assurance confirms a real person is authenticating in real time.
The broader pattern
The Philippines isn't alone in moving this direction. The UN Pension Fund deployed biometric liveness verification across 18 countries last year, replacing a paper-based process that required retirees to physically submit forms or appear in person. Across public sector agencies, the shift is happening because manual annual confirmation doesn't scale and doesn't reliably catch fraud when it does happen.
The face biometric liveness detection market is projected to exceed $250 million by 2027, pushed by high-stakes identity verification use cases where continuous payouts depend on confirmed eligibility.
What this looks like in practice for other sectors
Pension liveness verification is a narrow case, but the underlying problem shows up in insurance, healthcare, and anywhere benefits are tied to ongoing eligibility. The question is the same: how do you verify that the person claiming something is who they say they are, and that they're actually present?
Liveness detection answers both at once. A live selfie check at the point of claim or renewal adds a layer that documents alone can't provide. The SSS approach of layering biometric verification on top of existing processes, rather than replacing them entirely, makes sense when your user base includes elderly pensioners with varying levels of digital access. You need options that work across different situations.
That same logic applies in financial services and enterprise products. As we've written about in the context of biometric passkey-binding, the strongest identity signals come from combining presence confirmation with cryptographic credentials. Biometrics don't have to be the only path through a verification flow.
Authsignal's biometric authentication integrates into verification flows without requiring a rebuild of the underlying stack. It works alongside step-up authentication, MFA, and identity verification, so you can add a biometric presence check at exactly the point in your flow where the risk is highest.
Want to see how liveness detection fits into your verification flow? Talk to the Authsignal team.
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