UIF introduces new measures for bank account verification
The Fund has introduced new and more stringent controls to verify banking details.
In a quest to ensure that the Unemployment Insurance Fund’s Covid-19 Temporary Employee Relief Scheme does not fall prey to criminal elements, as has happened before, the Fund has introduced new and more stringent controls to verify banking details.
As a result of the introduction of the new safety and security changes, the Fund had to delay payments. However, it resumed payments over the weekend and disbursed R372 million (R372,226,900.92) in Covid-19 TERS benefit claims. The payment covered claims for April and May lodged by 15,866 employers, benefiting 78,283 employees whose banking details passed the verification process. Further payments were done on Tuesday, July 14, with some R295 million paid out from 1824 employers, benefiting 76,078 workers.
This brings the total paid to date since April 16 to just under R30 billion (R29,726,359 618.48) covering 6,789,695 workers from 539,953 employers.
As part of the new control measures, the Fund has also introduced a new rule that requires applicants to insert either their Enterprise number (CK/CIPC) or ID number of the bank account holder in the TERS Online portal in order to further verify banking details.
“This requirement, which may seem onerous, is critical to ensure that banking details are verified before any TERS payment is authorised. Failure to populate the system properly will unfortunately lead to more delays in the payment process,” warns UIF Commissioner Teboho Maruping.
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The Commissioner added that the Fund has been at the receiving end of fraud complaints after it emerged that certain individuals managed to change the banking details of their companies and inserted their own.
“This situation has created a need for us to do up-front account verification and validation before the payment is made, and we expect this to increase our turnaround time by two days, as the accounts are verified and validated to ensure that fraud at company level is eliminated as far as possible. We cannot over-emphasise how important it is for companies to provide correct information that can be validated and verified with the banks so that there are no delays with the payment,” said Maruping.
The new changes come on the back of the Fund having paid up to R1 billion (R1,012,212,773.31) directly into the bank accounts of 238,086 employees since April 2020, and direct payments to employees have not been affected by the new measures.
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