The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

The National Insurance Board (NIB) is aiming to upgrade its smart card to a "debit card" through a tender process that will be launched shortly, its director said yesterday.

Nicola Virgill-Rolle told the Long Island Business Outlook conference that the national social security system's latest digital proposal sought to improve beneficiaries' access to its various benefits - especially given how Hurricane Dorian impacted Abaco's banking system.

"Hurricane Dorian showed us that we need more methods for payments, because often-times the automated teller machine (ATM) will still be standing," she said. "Right now we pay our clients through direct deposit to their bank account, and also by cheque.

"But we want to keep up with the moves being made through the Central Bank with regard to digital payments, and a Request for Proposal (RFP) is coming out shortly for an electronic payment system where NIB will be upgrading your NIB smart card to a 'debit type of card' where we can pre-load benefits on the card and then you withdraw money from an ATM."

Turning to NIB's newly-launched Employer Self-Service (ESS) portal, Mrs Virgill-Rolle said it would "validate immediately" all contributions all information submitted. She added that if details such as names, date of birth or insurance number sere incorrect it would be rejected by the system, forcing employers to make adjustments before their filing is accepted.

"Similarly, with the claims process we want to make sure everything is validated," Mrs Virgill-Rolle said, "so whatever you need to have is there and the process won't let you go any further until you have all of your information in." She said this often caused delays, with documents being stuck in the "queue" at specific NIB departments, because they may be missing certain pieces of information.

Mrs Virgill-Rolle said NIB fields 22,000 calls per month on New Providence alone, and revealed that it plans to create a call centre to handle this load. "We have been investing in a new telephone system to do a whole lot of innovative things, along with structuring a call centre so someone who can answer the phone can give you the answer you need," she added.

Mrs Virgill-Rolle said NIB is launching customer service kiosks and public wi-fi for clients.