The Social Security Board has embarked on an initiative to institute biometrics as its primary form of identification for customers. If everything goes according to plan, by next year March, persons making benefit claims to SSB will verify their identities using biometrics such as fingerprinting.
It's part of Social Security's push to improve the way it does business, and with this proposed change, SSB is hoping to bring about 2 positive changes. They want to improve service delivery and retire the need for cumbersome paperwork for customers. And, equally important, SSB wants to reduce the risk of fraud and false identification that smart criminals have attempted to use to scam the social security fund.
The CEO tells us that this shift is part of their continued effort to keep up with the commitments they made to the public to improve the way they do business when they came asking for an increase in social security contributions.
SSB has been all around the country conducting public consultations on biometrics, and this afternoon, they made their last stop in Belize City. The management at Social Security invited the media this afternoon for a briefing on how these consultations have been going, and why they think that biometrics is the next logical step to pursue. Here's what CEO Dr. Colin Young told us:
Dr. Colin Young - CEO, SSB
"Biometrics, simply defined, looks at capturing a person's physical characteristics, a portion of that, to be able to identify them. And in many ways, we already use a lot of biometrics in our daily lives. We capture your photograph already. We capture your signature. And most people who have a smartphone that requires it to be unlocked with a fingerprint or facial recognition is participating in the use of biometrics. Now, at SSB, we need to be able to satisfy ourselves that the person is who they say they are, at the registration part of our engagement, and also that when we pay, that we are paying to that person."
"Now, you may say, well, why do this now? There was a recent publication in 2017 by the International Social Security Administration, that looked at error evasion and fraud in social security systems over the world. But, they particularly focused on developed countries like the Netherlands, the US, the UK, Sweden, and so on. And the results surprised a lot of people in the social security world, that the level of fraud and error evasion was very high in social security systems. In fact, you'll find that in the Netherlands, pension fraud ranged from between 10% to 20% of what they pay out in benefits."
"We asked the Cabinet than to approve a revision to the regulations that would allow us to capture biometrics. The Cabinet approved that, with the condition that we do national consultations. And so, this is part of that. This session is to sensitize the public. We've been all over the country. We've been to every district, speaking to insured persons and employers, to talk about the benefits of biometrics to the Social Security Board. The last session is going to be held at 2 o'clock today for the Belize City constituents."
So, how does the SSB think that biometrics will help? Well first, they say that they are trying to insulate the fund from all known fraud techniques. SSB doesn't know for sure just how much money was lost due to fraud behavior, but they say that they have data to suggest that it occurs more often than Belizeans may be aware of. Here's how the CEO explained the benefits of curbing fraud and identity theft:
Dr. Colin Young - CEO, SSB
"We have, over the years, amassed quite a bit of data to suggest that there are people out there who are intention perpetrating a fraud on the social security system, whether that is assuming someone else's identity, or whether that is not declaring deaths, for example, so that the pension payment can continue."
"When you die, and you're a member of the social security system, you get a death benefit. That death benefit is $1,500. What we find is that there is the temptation for some persons not to report the deaths, because what happens is that the pension payments continue to be made. And that will be, over time, much more than the $1,500. In fact, just a couple weeks ago, we had a situation of a pensioner dying, and the family chose not to report the death. We end up paying the pension payment for about 4 months before it was recognized that the person had passed away. And we had to go through a long process involving the bank, to get back the overpayment."
"Last year, in 2018, we paid over 50 million dollars in pension payments to beneficiaries. That is why the fund exists, to pay benefits, short-term, long-term. And if we look at what the more developed countries and more developed social security system are paying because of fraud, and we were to have a conservative estimate in Belize of that occurring, it will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund."
"Part of what biometrics would also do is that it is a deterrence to people who may be thinking about fraud because now they now. We have cases, in fact, there is another case right now, of an employee working at an establishment in Belize City. This is happening as we speak. And the person has assumed the identity of another insured person. So, he has the name, social security #, the birth date of a real living person, working for the establishment, and that employer is paying contributions to that number, and that name. We found this out, and this case is with the police. So, this is a clear case of identity theft."
"The better job we can do with minimizing fraud, then clearly, the better it is for the Fund, in terms of sustainability."
So, while biometrics protects from that type of criminal behavior, the CEO doesn't want it overlooked that this initiative benefits the public greatly. He told us it will improve the customer service experience
At this time, there are a number of steps that need to be completed in order to make the implementation of biometrics a reality.
But, SSB is hoping to finish it up by the first quarter of next year. We are told that they are considering whether or not iris recognition is another form of biometrics that they can afford to roll out.
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