It's not necessarily the customer's SSN that appears. In some cases a spouse or a child will receive benefits from a deceased spouse or parent's SSA account, and that claim number will appear in the ACH record.
Probably the majority of statement rendering systems include the SSA claim number on the statement because it's part of the ACH record that normally gets printed for other ACH items.
That doesn't make it ideal.
_________________________
John S. Burnett
BankersOnline.com
Fighting for Compliance since 1976
Bankers' Threads User #8