MANILA, Philippines—The Government Service Insurance System plans to put up by December a 50-seat call center that will run round the clock amid management’s efforts to make the agency more responsive to members.
Robert G. Vergara, GSIS president and general manager, said in a statement that the state pension fund has been designing “a new insurance policy with bigger savings.”
Vergara added that within the next six months, the GSIS would review its premium-based policy, which works under the principle of “what you pay is what you get,” as well as the educational and funeral pre-need plans.
The GSIS chief announced these efforts during a public consultation held in Cagayan de Oro City last Wednesday.
Vergara said these latest initiatives came on top of ongoing ones, such as increasing access of members and pensioners through its partnership with the Land Bank of the Philippines with the deployment of an additional 500 GSIS Wireless Automated Processing System (GWAPS) kiosks across the country.
Earlier, Vergara said the GSIS has removed the requirement for pensioners to renew their active status yearly.
Management has also revised GSIS’ survivorship policy, now allowing heirs of deceased members to receive their pension even if they are receiving income or pension from other institutions.
Also, GSIS has adopted the choice of loans amortization schedule for pensioners, which gives retirees the freedom to choose the settlement mode for their loan obligations.
On the other hand, GSIS is cleansing members’ records to reduce the “massive volume” of inaccurate statements.
Last May, Vergara said pensioners were no longer required to renew their status as active GSIS members yearly amid efforts to make transactions less inconvenient.
“We don’t want to impose unnecessary hardship on our more than 300,000 old-age and survivorship pensioners,” Vergara said.
Related to this, the GSIS has signed a memorandum of agreement with the National Statistics Office to collaborate on keeping up to date the pension fund’s roster of pensioners and survivor-beneficiaries.
Under the MOA, the GSIS will provide the NSO with an initial list of all its old-age and survivorship pensioners living in the country – and following that a monthly report – which will serve as database for NSO.