The Social Security System (SSS) has brought on board Pointwest Technologies Corporation, a leading fully Filipino-owned IT company to make one of the agency’s core projects more accessible to its members.
In 2014 the SSS unveiled its Personal Equity and Saving Option (PESO) Fund. The PESO Fund aims to give Filipino workers, whether here or abroad, more options to prepare for the future through a voluntary provident fund.
From L-R: Pointwest Senior Executive for Business Development Rene B. Quizon; SSS President and CEO Emilio S. de Quiros Jr., Pointwest President Maria Christina G. Coronel and SSS Senior Vice President, Information Technology Management Group (ITMG) Joel A. Layson.
Through this program, members who have the capacity to contribute more are given the opportunity to save more in order to receive additional benefits in the future.
For now, however, SSS members can only avail themselves of the PESO Fund by personally appearing at select SSS branches. Enrollment in all SSS branches nationwide plus online enrollment are still in the pipeline.
To speed up the process and to bring the whole project into the digital age, SSS tapped Pointwest to build an application that seamlessly integrates the PESO Fund online enrollment into the system of the SSS, particularly its member database. This would allow SSS members to enroll their PESO Fund to ‘My SSS.’
The agreement was signed by SSS President and CEO Emilio de Quiros, Jr., SSS Senior Vice President for Information Technology Management Group (ITMG) Joel Layson, Pointwest President Maria Christina Coronel and Pointwest Senior Executive for Business Development Rene Quizon.
Through ‘My SSS,’ members only have to register for their PESO Fund once. After which they can make requests and check their accounts online.
“Pointwest is well aware that we’re talking about people’s life savings here, about building a better future. So we’re helping the SSS make sure the system is as reliable as can be,” Rhea Latoga, Pointwest Senior Leader in charge of the project said.
The PESO Fund is one of several projects Pointwest is doing with the Philippine government. Pointwest views public-private partnerships as a way to deliver public services efficiently.
One of the company’s most successful public-private partnerships is with the Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazards, or Project NOAH, the disaster monitoring and hazards response unit of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST).
Pointwest developed the mobile app Arko, an extreme weather and flood hazards monitoring app for use by Project NOAH. Arko was the first Filipino-made app to win in the prestigious World Summit Awards for Mobile in 2014, and took the Best Philippine-made Mobile App of the Year Award in the 2015 International ICT Awards, the first for the new category. It is also in the top three of the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Category of the 2015 ASEAN ICT Awards. The app is free for download for both iOS and Android mobile devices.
Since its founding in 2003, Pointwest has been providing top Fortune 500 companies with world-class IT services, from mobile applications to entire IT backbone systems. The company has received recognition for the quality of its work, from winning the Innovation award in the first ever ASEAN Business Awards Philippines in 2014 to doing a “two peat” as Best Filipino-Owned Company of the Year in the International ICT Awards Philippines (2014 and 2015).
