NEWSDAY JANUARY 20, 2 K 14 Revamping mode at NIB By JANELLE DE SOUZA Monday, January 20 2014 THE National Insurance Board (NIB) is in the process of revamping its system so as to make it easier for persons to do business with the organisation, NIB Chairman Adrian Bharath says. “The institution has not gone through a lot of drastic changes. It’s not accustomed to that and we have embarked on some very aggressive changes to deal with some of the issues,” he stated as he addressed members of the Joint Select Committee yesterday at Tower D, International Waterfront Complex. Bharath said it would probably take two to three years to bring the NIB up-to-date with regard to technology as they are implementing a computerisation and online system in six-month stages. He noted those close to pensionable age would be dealt with immediately, and younger persons’ records would be addressed subsequently. “What has to be clarified is that you have a backlog of claims going back to about 800 on, some dating back to as far as 2004 and before. Then you have current claims that you have to deal with so you have to put aside the resources to deal with both concurrently,” stated Bharath. He specified there were 844 appeals before the National Insurance Appeals Tribunal with four to ten appeals being heard per year, saying that it was necessary to reduce the time frame. He therefore suggested an independent registrar or commission, a third party to deal with matters. “We need to recognise that system is untenable. There must be an independent party. The NIB can’t be judge, jury and executioner,” he said. He added that 41 to 72 percent of claims deal with accuracy of contributions made by members. Ag Executive Director, Karen Gopaul said some of the reasons behind this were errors made by clients in the submission of data, errors in rates, and employer challenges with data entry. To deal with this, Gopaul noted the organisation had put into action the Pension Ready project in which persons aged 60 to 65 could go into an NIB office and “clean up” their contribution records, filling in the gaps through personal or pay records. They intend to expand the project to persons aged 55 to 60 so that records could be prepared before retirement. The Contribution Data Manage-ment project is similar, but with an online component. “What we are moving towards, we are already in a project with the Treasury Division to deal with Government employees to submit their contribution data online. They will apply this system, review it and bring you back an error report upon processing it,” said Gopaul.
Posted on: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 11:02:23 +0000
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