Risk management is the process of identifying, analysing, accepting, mitigating or transferring uncertainty in investment decisions. Fund managers apply risk management by analysing and attempting to quantify the potential loss of an investment and then acting accordingly.

Institutions are being transformed thanks to the integration of new technologies. This vision represents a corporate change with a social impact, reducing costs, simplifying processes and procedures, and raising awareness of the importance and benefits of this transformation.

In June 2022, the Salvadoran Social Security Institute (Instituto Salvadoreño del Seguro Social – ISSS) in El Salvador put new technological solutions in place to improve its health-care services. Three electronic kiosks for confirming medical appointments were installed in the Consultorio de Especialidades (Specialist Clinic), the first working prototypes of a device that aims to support health centres’ processes.

The Seychelles Pension Fund (SPF or the Fund) undertook an extensive review of its investment management framework and related practices in 2021 and 2022. The exercise focussed on improving the institution’s Investment Policy framework, so that operations are aligned to international best practice and the prescriptions of the ISSA Guidelines.

Article 12 of Law No. 5508 on the Promotion, Protection of Maternity and Support for Breastfeeding establishes that maternity allowance should be paid to employed women by the social security scheme of Paraguay’s Social Insurance Institute (Instituto de Previsión Social – IPS). This amount is equivalent to 100 per cent of her salary at the time of delivery, and is paid for the prescribed months of rest. This used to be given to women in a single payment.

The issue of population growth and social security planning is one of the biggest challenges facing governments today, and is a key part of a good social security system that instils confidence in its members.

The Retirement and Pension Fund for Employees of Banks and Related Institutions (Caja de Jubilaciones y Pensiones de Empleados de Bancos y Afines) (Bank Fund, hereinafter) is in constant communication with its members. It therefore continuously updates its databases, in order to have a better understanding of members’ current realities, experiences and needs.

Digital transformation is happening in institutions through the integration of new technologies. This vision represents an institutional and social change, optimizing available resources, reducing costs, shortening processes and procedures, and raising awareness of the importance and benefits of this transformation.

Risk management is a fairly new concept within the Seychelles Pension Fund (SPF) which was established in 2018. As SPF is committed to creating a comprehensive risk management programme to ensure that risk is properly monitored and integrated in on-going management of each section, a new tool was necessary to complement our existing risk register. The tool is Excel based and has provided SPF with a systematic process to better manage and control section risks holistically.

Good practice in health – service quality.

As health-care systems have evolved to become more complex and due to the resultant increase in patients coming to harm in health care settings, patient safety has emerged as a health-care discipline.

The Seychelles Pension Fund (SPF) was set up in January 2006 by an Act of Parliament in 2000 with the objectives to provide for the financial security of members or the deceased dependents by the payment of a monthly pension. Following the introduction of SPF, the processing of benefits application was done using the physical application and this has some challenges because A4 paper had to be used in the processing of the application for the computation of the pension. Also, there was storage problems as there was no proper archive system in place for storage of records.

The Actuarial Advisory Office (Asesoría Actuarial) of the Social Insurance Institute (Instituto de Previsión Social – IPS) carried out an actuarial valuation of the Common Retirement and Pension Fund (Fondo Común de Jubilaciones y Pensiones). The valuation looks to comply with international best practices and observe the guidelines and standards of the International Standards of Actuarial Practice 2 (ISAP 2), and the ISSA-ILO Guidelines on Actuarial Work for Social Security, with technical support from the International Labour Organization (ILO).

Like most of the world’s countries, Paraguay has adopted lockdown measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19. These steps taken by the government have impacted the productive sector, leading to mass suspensions of employment contracts for persons insured with the Social Insurance Institute (Instituto de Previsión Social – IPS) of Paraguay.

When the COVID-19 pandemic was declared by the World Health Organization (WHO), in El Salvador the Directorate General of the Salvadoran Social Security Institute (Instituto Salvadoreño del Seguro Social – ISSS) put forward a new form of care. This was authorized by the ISSS board in agreement No. 2020-0651 ABR. This made it possible to implement virtual care through telemedicine, known as Dr. ISSS en línea (Dr. ISSS online).

As of 2022, the Salvadoran Social Security Institute (Instituto Salvadoreño del Seguro Social – ISSS) in El Salvador has 12 palliative care home support teams nationwide, four of which deal with the most complex cases. The teams are distributed across a variety of care networks.

Paraguay’s Social Insurance Institute (Instituto de Previsión de Social – IPS) used to make sick leave payments at its administrative offices, which had associated administrative costs and meant beneficiaries had to visit the IPS service counter in person.

The campaign named Pas Kot Fon Pansyon pour en Konversasyon translated into Come to pension fund for a conversation was the campaign introduced in 2019 to encourage members to consider the Seychelles Pension Fund (SPF) as a primary source of information pertaining to pension issues.

For years, the Salvadoran Social Security Institute (Instituto Salvadoreño del Seguro Social – ISSS) has had a reputation in El Salvador for not providing personalized care to beneficiaries, both in terms of health services and economic support. For this reason, people often think the employees who provide the services dehumanize and are indifferent to the needs of patients and their families. It is therefore urgent to transform this institutional culture, using a humanized approach to health as the transversal and fundamental axis.

Twelve years of intensive promotional activities since the launching of the Seychelles Pension Fund (SPF), we now have an appreciation that the importance of pension has well and truly permeated the population; inclusive of the informal sector albeit a slower rate. The key is to maintain member’s interest in their preparation towards retirement – and with a new decade comes a new generation, more IT savvy but with the same need.

It remains a challenge for the Seychelles Pension Fund (SPF) to attract members of the public who are in the informal sector. As a means to get this group to contribute towards SPF and later benefit with a pension, the protecting you campaign was initiated.

In today’s unprecedented times, effective and agile internal auditing is required. The Seychelles Pension Fund (SPF)’s Internal Audit (IA) function needs to adapt quickly to changing risks to provide assurance to its Board that the governance, risk management and control processes are working effectively, thus instilling public confidence that members’ contributions and the Fund’s assets are being well managed.

A review of Seychelles Pension Fund (SPF) communication strategy 2017 indicated that there was a visible service gap in terms of public perceptions of our services. There was a need to realign our communication strategy in line with SPF’s mandate so as to regain public support.

The previous marketing campaigns of the Seychelles Pension Fund (SPF) for voluntary contributions have given rise to many instances where participating members in the scheme wanted to open an account for their loved ones. The festive season being a time for giving gift, SPF packaged Voluntary Contribution as a gift that members can add to their list to give to their loved ones. As advocates of the Voluntary Contribution, existing participating members thus add leverage to our mission of cultivating a savings culture in our society.

In January 2018, the Seychelles Pension Fund (SPF) began implementing an automated data capture through the use of Extended Mark-up Language (XML) files and gradually moved away from manual posting of members’ contribution into the data management system. A decision was taken to start the exercise with government departments as they used a centralized system for payments. Its implementation will go through different phases over the years and we will later include the largest employers in the private sectors.

In January 2015, the Seychelles Pension Fund (SPF) implemented a new pension formula, this was to strengthen the link between contributions and benefits and provide incentives for members to contribute longer periods as they benefit from a higher pension. Due to the complexity of its components (Average Wage, Annual Average Wage Growth, Accrual Rate and Years of Contributions), the pension calculator was designed to enable members to get an indication of their pension without having to understand the technicality of the formula.

Pension in figures was first issued by the Seychelles Pension Fund (SPF) in 2011, and has been published every year since then. The aim was to try and attract more members to read and have an idea of the SPF’s annual performance and financial status so that they will be more abreast about the SPF’s current situation.