GIPF strives to deliver positive and professional interactions with our members and stakeholders in a manner that is right, fast and humane. In striving to be a leading and model pension fund globally, we are guided by our core values of teamwork, service excellence and integrity, focussing on delivering excellent service to our members and stakeholders in a manner that is right, fast and humane, and continuously enhancing operational efficiency through advanced technology and streamlined business processes.
Excellent service and innovation has always been a focus for GIPF,
and the Covid-19 pandemic made that focus urgent, more critical.
We moved quickly to help our members, employees, employers,
and communities adapt to the pandemic. Engagement with our
members and stakeholders was bolstered and operational efficiency
further enhanced amidst the challenges presented by the Covid-19
pandemic.
The combined drive, synergy and passion by the Marketing and
Stakeholder Engagement Department, the Operations Department,
and the Information Systems Department, to provide outstanding
service to our members and stakeholders, has resulted in exceptional
performance across most of the strategic objectives and initiatives
this year.
The Business Process Improvement (BPI) project initiated during
the 2019 financial year has enabled the maximum possible value
to be extracted through enhanced operational efficiency. The average
turnaround times to pay out member benefits was not unduly
hampered by Covid-19, with most strategic targets set for the year
exceeded.
The average turnaround time for retirement benefits reduced from 30 days to 13 days, resignation benefits from 30 days to 14 days, and death benefit pay-outs reduced from 12 months to 6 months. The turnaround time for funeral benefit pay-outs remained at 12 hours. The average waiting and service time reduced from less than 33 mins to less than 26.6 mins (waiting time) and from less than 8.6 mins to less than 6.51 mins (service time). Overall systems availability during the year was excellent, with no downtime recorded due to any security incidents.
Substantial resources were allocated to the key strategic objectives and initiatives described under this strategic theme. Most of our targets under this strategic theme were achieved, apart from the challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic on hosting planned engagement sessions with our members, our participating employers and the media. Member outreach programme execution was exceeded with an intensive campaign undertaken to educate and inform our members of various pension fund related matters concerning them.