Two years ago, I was one of the principal sponsors at the wedding of a daughter of a good friend. After years of trying for a child with her husband, my goddaughter finally saw those two red lines in the pregnancy test. Given the current pandemic, she reached out to me, worried about how she will notify the Social Security System (SSS) of her pregnancy without being exposed to Covid-19.
It has been almost a year now since we have been placed on lockdown to protect ourselves from a deadly virus—and it has brought varying degrees of difficulty for everyone. As the number of cases continues to rise and the discovery of a new strain that is said to be more infectious, the rest of the society remain at home, particularly if they have no important transaction to do outside. Government institutions and private corporations had to shift work processes online to continue serving their clients without disrupting service delivery.
It has been our vision at SSS to provide social protection through world-class service. We had to reshape the way we think to better serve our members. One of our primary concerns is how do we stay connected while being physically distant? Thankfully, modern technology has provided us a venue to do just that. The SSS mobile app developed three years ago provided a simple, fast, and easy way to serve our members.
We launched the SSS Mobile Application in 2018 to provide members a more convenient way to transact with SSS without the hassle of queuing in our physical branches. Members can download the app for free through Google Play, Apple App Store, and Huawei AppGallery.
The services available in the SSS Mobile App are not only limited to inquiries regarding membership information, contribution breakdown, status of benefit claims, salary loan application and outstanding balance, documentary requirements for membership and benefit claims, and location of SSS branches with location map.
The app also allows transactions for salary loan application for employed and individual members, generation of Payment Reference Number and downloading of the PDF file containing the PRN, submission of maternity notification for individual members, and updating of contact information. Employers can also update their contact information and view their profile, as well as post contributions, loan payments, and benefit claim reimbursements.
SSS has been continuously upgrading our mobile app through additional functionalities. In December 2019, SSS partnered with PayMaya to allow individual members to pay their contributions via SSS Mobile App. A year after, SSS added the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) as a collection partner to allow individual members to pay contributions via the app. We also re-enabled the submission of salary loan application in the mobile app to implement mandatory bank disbursement of loan proceeds.
As a result of these enhancements, the SSS Mobile App ranked first on the Google Play under the productivity category with over 7 million downloads. From 14,412,072 facilitated transactions via the SSS App in 2019, total transactions increased more than four-fold to 74,396,837 in 2020.
As younger generations enter the work force, we know it is imperative to embrace automation and digital transformation.
At this point, I am encouraging everyone to help us in promoting this service, especially to the older generations, so they can also experience the same level of safety and convenience when using the SSS mobile application.
I remember reading a quote from former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who said: “The Number 1 benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn’t think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential.”
Have a fulfilling week ahead!
Aurora C. Ignacio is SSS president and chief executive officer.
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