VA Pension Automation Tracker: the pipeline, month by month.
VA completes hundreds of thousands of pension, survivor, and burial claims a year through automated processing, and publishes almost nothing about how that pipeline decides. This tracker is built from claim-level records VA released to us under the Freedom of Information Act: monthly volumes, grant rates, and completion times, recomputed and validated from the raw rows. It extends each time VA releases new records under our standing requests.
Outcomes by benefit type
The same automated pipeline treats the four benefits very differently. Totals cover the full window on record.
| Benefit | Completed | Granted | Grant rate | Over 125 days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Burial benefits | 171,255 | 136,894 | 79.9% | 5.8% |
| DIC (survivor compensation) | 75,945 | 50,895 | 67% | 19.8% |
| Veteran pension | 6,891 | 3,532 | 51.3% | 15.8% |
| Survivors Pension | 4,012 | 1,315 | 32.8% | 33.2% |
Month by month
All-claims figures per completion month, with the grant rate for each benefit type alongside. Average days are claim-weighted; the median shows how fast the typical claim actually moves.
| Month | Completed | Granted | Avg days | Median | Over 125d | Burial | DIC | Vet pension | Survivor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 2025 | 26,292 | 77% | 57 | 6 | 19.2% | 83.8% | 63.6% | 45.6% | 35% |
| Sep 2025 | 26,090 | 72.4% | 59.9 | 10 | 16.6% | 78.8% | 63.8% | 51.1% | 31.9% |
| Oct 2025 | 24,039 | 72.7% | 53.2 | 8 | 15.4% | 79.3% | 63.1% | 55.3% | 38.7% |
| Nov 2025 | 16,996 | 72.9% | 53 | 7 | 14.6% | 79.8% | 62.3% | 49.9% | 33% |
| Dec 2025 | 19,878 | 74.5% | 48.2 | 7 | 12.4% | 79.9% | 65.4% | 65.2% | 37.4% |
| Jan 2026 | 20,854 | 74.5% | 45.1 | 7 | 10.2% | 79.4% | 66.9% | 64.5% | 31.1% |
| Feb 2026 | 19,680 | 75.4% | 35.4 | 5 | 7.7% | 79.3% | 70.6% | 50.4% | 37.4% |
| Mar 2026 | 21,963 | 76.2% | 30.8 | 5 | 5.9% | 79.8% | 71.5% | 49.1% | 30% |
| Apr 2026 | 20,687 | 74.5% | 32.1 | 5 | 6.2% | 79.1% | 69.1% | 45.9% | 27.6% |
| May 2026 | 19,255 | 74.9% | 29.6 | 5 | 5.1% | 79.1% | 70% | 42.3% | 27.6% |
| Jun 2026 | 20,887 | 74.7% | 28.3 | 5 | 4.9% | 79.4% | 68.9% | 44.3% | 30.2% |
| Jul 2026 | 21,482 | 75.8% | 27.4 | 5 | 5.1% | 80.2% | 71% | 46.8% | 29.4% |
What happens after a denial
Across the window, about 2.69 percent of automation-completed decisions were challenged: 4,443 Supplemental Claims, 2,353 Higher-Level Reviews, and 143 Board appeals. Of the 206 issues the Board decided from this pipeline, 55 were allowed and 63 sent back for another look.
Our full analysis of the Survivors Pension gap is published as a research report: Two in Three.