The Tribune

By RIEL MAJOR

Tribune Staff Reporter

rmajor@tribunemedia.net

THE National Insurance Board yesterday launched the pilot phase of its employer self-service portal.

Speaking to reporters, National Insurance Board (NIB) Director Dr Nicola Virgill-Rolle said the agency is committed to customer engagement with the use of customer centric technology for an overall positive experience.

She said: "In 2018, my executive team and I set out to develop a detailed five-year strategic plan that would govern and guide this organisation into 2024. Sustainability of the fund and modernisation of the social security programme were key points around in which this plan was created. Hence the theme towards a sustainable NIB 2019 to 2024, creating a world class organisation.

"The first and one of the key pillars of the strategic plan is providing exceptional customer service. Because we recognise that we need to effectively deliver our services to our customers who come to us for service, this digital platform offers a solution to our employers and self-employed persons to make doing business with the National Insurance Board a lot easier and more convenient."

Dr Virgill-Rolle said the employers self-service portal (ESS) is just the latest innovative tool being piloted by the board to improve its business processes.

"The employers self-service portal is an online portal where employers may log on from anywhere at any time to manage their NIB account. Two of the key benefits that will be experienced by employers is that ESS will digitise and simplify the process of submitting contributions statements, C10s and make contribution payments via online payments," she noted.

"Contributions are the heart of NIB's operation and are used to accurately calculate benefits and determine claim eligibility. In May 2018, when the board commenced the V3 stabilisation project, we had a huge backlog of C10s, over 200,000 C10s were placed in the backlog processing and we brought on a special team to manually process these C10s."

She added: "Earlier this year, we have over 244 of those have been digitised and over 180 of those had been posted to employer accounts. With the implementation of these special initiatives the backlog was greatly and significantly reduced. This will make claim processes significantly quicker in the future."

Dr Virgill-Rolle said the goal of NIB is to eliminate these backlogs by providing employers with a convenient alternative of managing their accounts from anywhere.

She said: "The ESS portal puts the employer in control and simplifies this process. It is expected to result in a higher rate of compliance by employers. It will no longer be necessary for employers to visit NIB office or a drop box location to make contribution payments to their accounts."

Forty-one companies are participating in the pilot phase.