GSIS Assures More Flexible and Transparent Loan Windows
May 30, 2015
BAGUIO CITY – Lesser interest, flexible terms and transparency windows. This is the assurance of Government Service Insurance System President and General Manager Robert Vergara to the System’s members and pensioners.
In a recent stakeholders dialogue here, Vergara announced that from the previous eight (8) percent interest rate per annum, loan interest is now down to 6%, the 1% service fee is waived, and grace period for the payment of the first amortization is extended to three months.
He also assured a more flexible emergency loan assistance to members during time of disaster or calamities as what GSIS did in typhoon Yolanda-affected areas.
Vergara informed that GSIS is working for a more transparent membership premiums and loan account that will soon address the perennial issues of un-posted premium payments and discrepancy in loan application and balances.
“We are working to institutionalize the regular issuance of statement of loan accounts to members to improve the transparency on loan payments and balances. As one of our major undertakings, we are pushing for transparency on members’ loan accounts and we will do this systematically”, he said.
Through such undertaking, the GSIS and the members themselves can reconcile their records. According to Vergara, they will start with the loan accounts of members who are 59 years old and above as they are nearing retirement. Around 127,000 GSIS members are set to benefit from this.
It will to soon include those 49 up to 58 years old members to cover around 347,000 members.
We will do this little by little until we eventually cover all the 1.4 million GSIS members. We already started the program in seven of our branches and now we are bringing it to 21 more branches and soon this will be applied in all the 58 GSIS branches, nationwide”, Vergara said.
As for posting of membership premiums, Vergara informed that , through various policy and program reforms since 2010, GSIS posting efficiency is now at 95.28% in 2014./JDP/CCD – PIA CAR
