The National Insurance Board (NIB) has embarked on a registration drive designed to "cleanse and update" its database, given that there are 40,000 businesses on its register, and the last time a registration drive was conducted was in 2006, according to NIB Head of Compliance Stephen Thompson.
The registration drive was launched on Monday, and Thompson spoke with Guardian Business about it yesterday. He said it would run for six weeks, and that the information to be gathered is "critical" to the board going forward, both for policymakers and for financial projections.
The NIB registration drive is not to be confused with the National Health Insurance registration drive. The two are entirely separate, and Thompson stressed the need to keep the two activities distinct.
Drive
For the next month and a half, NIB personnel will be "on foot patrol" -- as Thompson put it -- seeking to determine the exact number of businesses in operation in The Bahamas. The surveyors will also be seeking to gather email addresses for these employers in order to facilitate the modernization of NIB processes.
"We also want to determine - of those businesses which are still in operation - how many of them have staff counts which may have changed over time... The board is also very concerned in determining how many employees each business operation out there has," Thompson said.
He pointed out that staffing levels are subject to fluctuation on an almost daily basis.
"We are really talking about a snapshot of a particular point in time," he said. "But it's very important for the board to conduct registration drives periodically."
Thompson said NIB is also very concerned about the number of self-employed persons in the country.
"We know that there would be instances where you would have self-employed persons who are attached to businesses, or you may have self-employed persons who are sole proprietors and operating on their own. We need to determine -- just as for businesses -- how many self-employed persons are actually in operation," he said.
Compliance
Thompson acknowledged that NIB's figures, "rough guesstimates that have been around for years", say 25 percent of self-employed persons and 30 percent of businesses are NIB-compliant.
"Until we know otherwise, those would be the figures that we use," he said.
He added that a critical outcome of the registration drive will be the ability to determine the exact number of extant businesses, which will have implications for NIB's revenue projections as well.
"So you can see why it would be critical for us to obtain information such as not just the number of businesses in operation, but also the number of employees and their respective salaries," he said.
Budget
Thompson also talked with Guardian Business about the way in which the registration drive would influence NIB's financial predictions. He pointed out that the shifting state of affairs in the economy makes it difficult to pin down with absolute certainty what the revenue should be.
"The board has an actuary on staff. We have studies of the traditional data, and that is what is used to make the projections for revenue stream for a given year. Unless you really go out there door to door... to determine which businesses are actually open or have closed since we made those projections, that information is subject to change," he said.
According to Thompson, NIB's budgeted amount for revenue is "just beyond $21 million per month".
"The board has been fairly successful in meeting its monthly budget. The board did not make that every month, but that is the targeted amount and the board has been very successful in meeting that target," he said.
"When this registration drive is completed and all the data collected and analyzed, we would be in a position to say concisely what the revenue stream ought to be... Businesses are constantly closing, constantly opening."
In 2013, the board's total comprehensive income was $33.7 million, bringing reserves to $1.687 billion. In 2014 NIB reported that for the fourth consecutive year, contribution income exceeded benefit expenditure. Total comprehensive income, however, declined from $33.7 million for 2013 to $11.5 million for 2014. With this surplus, reserves at the end of 2014 were $1.698 billion.
Thompson was hopeful that Bahamian businesses and business owners would cooperate fully with NIB personnel during the drive.
Click here to read more at The Nassau Guardian
