The Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) was recently awarded a Certificate of Merit by the International Social Security Association for its Electronic Premium Remittance System (EPRS) during its Virtual Social Security Forum for Asia and the Pacific 2022 held in February this year in Geneva, Switzerland.
The PhilHealth EPRS was cited for “Pioneering digital transformation in premium contribution” in the ISSA Good Practice Awards Asia and the Pacific Competition 2021 which received a total of 168 entries from 30 social security organizations in 19 countries from the region.
The EPRS is a web-based application made available to government and private sector employers to enable the remittance and reporting of PhilHealth contributions of their employers easier and convenient. Through the said system, employers can update their employee lists and their corresponding monthly salaries, generate monthly billing statements called Statement of Premium Account or SPA, and even pay online. To date, Bank of the Philippine Islands, Land Bank of the Philippines, Security Bank, Union Bank and BancNet member banks are among the participating collecting agents where employers can make their remittances at the comfort of their offices and even their homes.
In a related development, the ISSA in its publication entitled Priorities for Social Security Trends 2022: Challenges and Solutions, the EPRS was recognized, saying that “The Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) is taking steps towards digitalization through an Electronic Premium Remittance System (EPRS) to eliminate manual submissions of contribution-related transactions, minimize fraud and reconciliation issues, and save time and other resources that are otherwise necessary for manual submission”.
PhilHealth said that this is further validation of the usefulness and advantages of the EPRS to the employers in keeping their employee lists updated through its facility to report newly-hired and resigned employees, declaration of correct monthly salaries for the accurate computation of contributions, among others. The EPRS also enable employers and those tasked to manage PhilHealth remittances to veer away from the tedious manual processing as well as from various health risks posed by the current pandemic.
The EPRS was also instrumental in the country’s bid to reduce regulatory complexity and cost when the Philippines was recognized for introducing “online-filing and payment of health contributions” in the World Bank 2017 Doing Business Report.
PhilHealth continues to encourage employers with more than ten employees to avail of the EPRS to enjoy greater efficiency, convenience and safety it offers.
