Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Em­ploy­ees are be­ing urged to re­tain their TD4 forms as a safe­guard against pay­roll dis­crep­an­cies, as the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NIBTT) con­tin­ues to grap­ple with wide­spread in­ac­cu­ra­cies in em­ploy­er-sub­mit­ted da­ta that are af­fect­ing con­tri­bu­tion records and ben­e­fit cal­cu­la­tions.

Ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the NIBTT, Niala Per­sad-Po­li­ah, made the ap­peal yes­ter­day while ap­pear­ing be­fore a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) ex­am­in­ing the ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty, re­spon­sive­ness and ser­vice de­liv­ery per­for­mance of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

She told law­mak­ers that the in­tegri­ty of the sys­tem de­pends heav­i­ly on the ac­cu­ra­cy of month­ly em­ploy­er sub­mis­sions, but not­ed that per­sis­tent er­rors con­tin­ue to un­der­mine da­ta qual­i­ty.

“We re­ly heav­i­ly on the ac­cu­ra­cy of the da­ta from em­ploy­ers,” she said. “Every month, em­ploy­ers are asked to sub­mit a 184 form de­tail­ing em­ploy­ee in­for­ma­tion and in­come, ac­com­pa­nied by a 187 form, which is the pay­ment form.”

How­ev­er, Per­sad-Po­li­ah dis­closed that a sig­nif­i­cant pro­por­tion of sub­mis­sions con­tain in­cor­rect or in­com­plete in­for­ma­tion.

“What we have seen, Chair, is that from the vast ma­jor­i­ty of our em­ploy­ers, we would have seen in­cor­rect da­ta com­ing in­to the NIB. The cur­rent in­sur­ance ad­min­is­tra­tion sys­tem di­gests that in­cor­rect da­ta. We have seen in­cor­rect NI num­bers, in­cor­rect names, miss­ing dates of birth, a suite of in­cor­rect in­for­ma­tion com­ing in­to the NIB.”

She ex­plained that when faulty da­ta is re­ceived, it can­not be prop­er­ly matched to con­trib­u­tors and is in­stead di­vert­ed in­to an er­ror file for fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“When that hap­pens, the con­tri­bu­tion state­ment is not ac­cu­rate. Every year, you are sup­posed to have 52 con­tri­bu­tions per an­num. If the in­for­ma­tion is in­cor­rect, con­trib­u­tors come to the NIB say­ing their con­tri­bu­tions are miss­ing.”

As a re­sult, Per­sad-Po­li­ah is urg­ing work­ers to main­tain their own records.

“We are ask­ing cus­tomers, as an al­ter­na­tive, to have your pay records and TD4s,” she said, not­ing that these doc­u­ments can as­sist in ver­i­fy­ing con­tri­bu­tions when dis­crep­an­cies arise.

Per­sad-Po­li­ah al­so out­lined the scale and op­er­a­tional pres­sures fac­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion, de­scrib­ing the NIBTT as a long-stand­ing, pre­dom­i­nant­ly pa­per-based in­sti­tu­tion.

“The NIB is a 54-year-old or­gan­i­sa­tion that is pri­mar­i­ly pa­per-based,” she said.

She ex­plained that the Board serves ap­prox­i­mate­ly 230,000 ben­e­fi­cia­ries month­ly, with about 226,618 clas­si­fied as long-term ben­e­fi­cia­ries. In 2025, the NIBTT paid out $6.6 bil­lion in ben­e­fits while col­lect­ing just over $5 bil­lion in con­tri­bu­tions, re­sult­ing in a short­fall cov­ered through in­vest­ment and oth­er in­come.

On the op­er­a­tional side, the Board process­es be­tween 42,000 and 45,000 claims on av­er­age, serves more than 600,000 in­sured per­sons, and man­ages an ac­tive em­ploy­er base of 14,000 to 15,000.

De­spite its ex­ten­sive reach, the or­gan­i­sa­tion op­er­ates with just over 600 em­ploy­ees.

“For con­text, we have over 600,000 ben­e­fi­cia­ries, 223,000 of which we pay month­ly, and 600 em­ploy­ees ser­vic­ing those ben­e­fi­cia­ries. We op­er­ate a lean ship. We are cost-con­scious,” she said.

Ad­min­is­tra­tive ex­pens­es stand at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $286 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly, while the in­sti­tu­tion main­tains a fund val­ued at $27 bil­lion.

“We stand strong at $27 bil­lion and we are grate­ful for re­form that will im­prove our sus­tain­abil­i­ty,” Per­sad-Po­li­ah added.

Mean­while, chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer for Busi­ness Ser­vices, Andy Ed­wards, told the com­mit­tee that while there has long been in­tent to ex­tend cov­er­age to self-em­ployed in­di­vid­u­als, leg­isla­tive gaps have de­layed im­ple­men­ta­tion.

“It has al­ways been the in­ten­tion of NIB to bring self-em­ployed per­sons in­to the sys­tem; how­ev­er, the leg­isla­tive frame­work to back that has nev­er been put in place,” Ed­wards said.

He not­ed that ef­forts date back more than a decade.

“In 2015 there was a work­ing com­mit­tee to look in­to bring­ing self-em­ployed per­sons in­to the sys­tem. It was brought back again in 2019, and strate­gies were de­vel­oped. One thing that is need­ed is an in­jec­tion of funds.”