The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

The National Insurance Board (NIB) “pumped $67m” into the economy during March, its director said yesterday, adding that it is having “good success” in progressing 2,000 stalled benefit claims.

Dr Nicola Virgil-Rolle, speaking during a Zoom conference with the media, said the social security scheme had contributed significantly to keeping Bahamian families and the economy afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic via a mixture of benefits and $46m in pension payouts.

She added that some 18,000 unemployment benefit claims, totalling some $8.7m, had been paid out over the past four weeks as NIB continued to chip away at the 2,000 claims that stalled because their former employers failed to provide the necessary insurable wage information on their C10 filings.

That delays NIB calculating the amount of unemployment benefit a worker is due, but Dr Virgil-Rolle said: “In terms of the applications we have had good success with contacting employers, who have been willing to come in and supply the information - sometimes months of information - quickly as soon as they recognise the challenge it causes in calculating the insurable wage.

“So whereas they would have submitted the B80 forms for their former employees, they did not realise how important having the actual C10 forms, which give us enough information to calculate the insurable wage, were.”

She added: “We have had good success, and we have gotten through quite a bit of those. Of course, we have been insisting with the more recent ones that they be sent in electronically rather than in paper forms that come into us that we have to manually key in, which takes us more time.

“I can say without having exact figures before me we have had some good success there in order to process them and get those coming into us. Our inspectors have been tremendous in going after companies to send in what was required, so I think that was a fruitful exercise doing that.”

Stressing the importance of compliance, Dr Virgil-Rolle said: “This [the COVID-19 pandemic] has really brought home the importance of compliance, not just from a legalistic point of view, but because in times like these if you are compliant and you have done all that you need to do, and if you remain compliant and pay on time, you will be much more easily processed.

“I think that we have also seen the importance of formalisation, in some of the new programmes we have. Having that business license and being formalised has made the difference between a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ in our processes.”

Describing the two-tiered process NIB now has for unemployed persons, Dr Virgil-Rolle said: “We have the normal unemployment benefit. Benefits come as you have contributed to the NIB scheme over the years, and that’s a minimum of 52 payments, of which you have to have seven in the last 13 weeks.

“We have been processing over the last four weeks many of these, and so our latest numbers we have are about 18,000 have now been processed with a payout of $8.7m.”

She added, “We still have a few thousand left, and we are getting new claims from the Department of Labour. We are just making sure there are no duplicates there, but we are working on some claims we are getting from there.

“Then, of course, we have a few thousand claims where we are processing through our compliance role where we have to seek the records from the employers, and where we have them in our system we post them for persons so they can be processed.”

Dr Virgil-Rolle said NIB had received 7,771 applications for the Government-sponsored self-employed benefit initiative, of which 4,117 have been approved 4,117 and 863 are pending. The remainder have been rejected.

She added that the discrepancy between applications and approvals was largely due to persons sending in more than one submission, and those who have been denied reapplying for assistance.