OUR BUSINESS

Our Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic

The ongoing enduring effects of the Covid-19 pandemic continued to cause further disruptions to businesses and overwhelmed the health delivery system. The second wave affected our own staff and a number of our members and stakeholders.

The Fund created a Covid Crisis Committee during the first wave which enabled the business to monitor and take appropriate actions to mitigate the impact of the virus.

From a business perspective, the focus was on employee safety, as well as on addressing the challenges faced by our members and broader society.

Our Covid Response

Before Pandemic

Embedment of operating model, which provided ability to respond rapidly to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Positioned as paper-driven with manual processes with a future digital strategy.
Payout of benefits under prescribed parameters of the NSSF Act.
Normal Risk management policies.
Normal CSI initiatives.

Immediate Response

Supported by the roll out of our IT strategy that enabled self-service and straight through processing, we were ahead of most companies in the implementation of remote work as a default operating model.
Business continuity (safety and security of employees, remote working, enabling continued client service, minimising risks and managing costs, upskilling of staff where necessary).
Stakeholder management, safety of customers, assisting clients through uncertainty, payment deferrals, identifying needs (liquidity, communication, touchpoints, etc).
Lobbying with Parliament to enact the NSSF amendment Bill to enable the Fund to provide midterm access.
Visible leadership, communication and interaction strategy, employee and customer wellbeing.
Healthcare support for staff at home and in hospitals.
Staff awareness and education on preventative measures.
Staff counselling services - emotional and psychological support.

REINVENTION: Building for the “new normal”

Accelerating implementation of certain initiatives (remote working, digital strategy, consolidating initiatives and refocussing strategy on new environment, greater focus on occupational health).
Holistic staff wellness programme and vaccinations.
Enabled Members who were hospitalised due to Covid-19 to access benefits.
Leveraging new Innovations (continued growth in member numbers – integrate digital technologies, workflow streamlining, interactive engagements,virtual events, thought leadership and financial literacy initiatives).
Updated Risk Management and other related policies.
Increased sateholder engagement through virtual channels.
Innovative CSI Initiatives and employee volunteerism.
Reorganising and restructuring staff based on geographical location and new business requirements.
Addressing inequalities in the eduaction sector by facilitating the provision of education to rural children.

Initiatives

customers

E-Clearance portal upgrade. 8,978 certificates granted to eligible entities.
Online certificate authenticity verification also enabled.
Electronic self-assessment tool through companies in real time.
First Virtual Customer Connect Week under the theme “Financial Literacy (FL) managing debt”.

Staff

Enabling staff to remain effective while working remotely.
Staff were provided laptops, MIFI, data and airtime, to ensure they remained connected.
A work from home policy was developed.
Support to staff on Covid-19 matters including information on revised SOPs and test financing.
Initiated employee wellness journey (physical, social, emotional, and financial) to enabled us to establish the key health issues amongst our staff.
Counselling services were enhanced to cover all staff, their families, and close associates.

Stakeholders

Contributions deferral initiative for employers negatively impacted by the pandemic was extended.
The long-term expectation is increased loyalty; the Fund listened and cared when it mattered most.
The Fund held the first ever virtual suppliers’ forum.
The procurement process was enhanced to receive bids and seek clarification online from clients.
The Fund allowed members that were critically suffering from Covid-19 to apply for up to UGX 50 m of their savings to help them meet their medical bills.

CONTINUITY

Continued to build capacity to enable employees to work remotely.
From a customer’s perspective, the Fund built various capabilities for customer self service such as Apps for online registration, submission of claims, remittance of contributions and updates of member records.

SECURITY

Information security and financial crime risks are elevated with the threat of increased cyber-attacks, especially with reliance on digital channels and remote working practices.
The Fund invested heavily in information security and continuously assesses the strength of the security infrastructure through penetration tests and vulnerability assessments.
The Fund has a comprehensive disaster recovery plan, which is subject to annual tests.

Highlights

customers

Increased uptake on digital channels: nearly all customer service traffic was through the Fund’s e-channels at a ratio of 96:4.
Increase in self-registration to 70%, ensuring convenience and increased data accuracy with details submitted to NIRA automatically.
Updated on our database.
Paid out UGX 1.5 Bn to assist Members to pay their medical bills.
Registered over 100,000 views on the Customer Connect Week Financial Literacy content - this continued to increase to over 450,000.
More than 264 staff were engaged during the Staff Connect Week.
Through the digital financial literacy programme, we reached 1,489,000 customers.
Registered 82 partner institutions that provided insights based on domain expertise to customers.

Staff

Reduction in expenses: Savings amounting to UGX 11Bn.
Positive staff feedback received from staff in adapting to the changing ways of work.
Used the employee wellness findings to develop and implement immediate remedial interventions, that involved a robust 5-point action plan of encouraging an ‘active’ lifestyle, eating right, mental wellbeing, and establishing a Medical Board.
Counselling services were significant in providing staff the necessary emotional balance and psychological stability.
All staff and their dependent’s that tested positive were fully treated and provided post treatment counselling support.

Stakeholders

Companies that are up to date with their remittances can get an auto certificate while those in arrears are notified of their period in arrears and are given convenient settlement options.
The virtual suppliers' forum was very successful, reaching 5,000 (June 2019: 300) local and international participants, with very good responses of 85% positive sentiment and 97% overall satisfaction.
Automation of the procurement process significantly impacted on reducing the cost of bidding to service providers.
37 members were paid a total of UGX 1.5 Bn to meet medical bills.

CONTINUITY

Stability of IT systems: The IT department provided flawless services during lockdown enabling 85% of staff access to IT services to serve customers and continue with normal business operations.
Effective communication over social media: In the period, our on-line media usage grew by 27% with a total of 1,361,507 customers using our social media and digital channels. We attribute this to the successful execution of “Our services are on-line campaign”.
Convenience is critical in our communication and service delivery and even in the Post Covid Era, we expect to see an increasing adoption of online platforms.

SECURITY

We are completing a higher number of compliance audits than prior to the Covid -19 pandemic, demonstrating increased productivity real time visibility of ongoing audits and minimised chances of fraud by creating an audit trail.
The Fund invested heavily in information security and continuously assesses the strength of the security infrastructure through penetration tests and vulnerability assessments.
In this year’s disaster recovery test, we exceeded our Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) on all applications by 34% on average.