Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo yes­ter­day ac­cused for­mer min­is­ter of fi­nance, Colm Im­bert, of de­lay­ing the lay­ing of the 11th Ac­tu­ar­i­al Re­view of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Sys­tem for 18 months be­tween Oc­to­ber 19, 2022, and April 19, 2024.

In lay­ing the an­nu­al re­port of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day, Tan­coo de­scribed ac­tu­ar­i­al re­views as “the pri­ma­ry in­stru­ments that guide re­spon­si­ble de­ci­sion mak­ing for the long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Fund.”

Tan­coo said the de­lay in lay­ing the ac­tu­ar­i­al re­port had con­se­quences. He said while the re­view re­mained on the for­mer min­is­ter’s desk, “the deficit be­tween con­tri­bu­tions and ben­e­fits pay­ments widened. The Fund con­tin­ued to be drawn down. And the warn­ings of near­ing de­ple­tion grew more ur­gent.”

The an­nu­al re­port of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board (NIB) in­di­cat­ed that the in­sti­tu­tion closed its 2025 fi­nan­cial year with con­tri­bu­tion in­come re­bound­ing to $5 bil­lion, a 5.3 per cent in­crease over the pre­vi­ous year. Ben­e­fit ex­pen­di­ture con­tin­ued to out­pace con­tri­bu­tions, reach­ing $6.63 bil­lion and leav­ing a $1.63 bil­lion short­fall.

NIB ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Niala Per­sad-Po­li­ah, in her com­ments in the an­nu­al re­port, de­scribed the year as one of “steady progress and strate­gic adapt­abil­i­ty,” but un­der­scored the ur­gent need for pen­sion re­form to se­cure the sys­tem’s long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Per­sad-Po­li­ah high­light­ed the roll­out of phas­es one to three of the EM­POW­ER dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion ini­tia­tive, which in­tro­duced se­cure on­line on­board­ing for em­ploy­ers and mod­ernised HR and fi­nance op­er­a­tions through Or­a­cle Fu­sion and in­te­grat­ed pay­roll sys­tems. The mi­gra­tion to the Or­a­cle In­sur­ance Pol­i­cy Ad­min­is­tra­tion (OIPA) plat­form al­so ad­vanced, with a wave-based ap­proach adopt­ed to re­duce risks and en­sure smoother stake­hold­er tran­si­tion. Fol­low­ing the ran­somware in­ci­dent of the pri­or year, FY2025 was free of cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty breach­es, thanks to strength­ened mon­i­tor­ing and staff train­ing.

On the com­pli­ance front, the gov­ern­ment’s amnesty on penal­ties and in­ter­est, which ran from Oc­to­ber 2024 to Au­gust 2025, yield­ed $120.7 mil­lion in ar­rears col­lec­tions from 3,302 em­ploy­ers. Mean­while, the 12th Ac­tu­ar­i­al Re­view of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Sys­tem, led by the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­ga­ni­za­tion, com­menced and was ex­pect­ed to be con­clud­ed by De­cem­ber 2025, pro­vid­ing crit­i­cal rec­om­men­da­tions for re­form.

The an­nu­al re­port not­ed that 230,722 in­di­vid­u­als re­ceived ben­e­fits in FY2025, up 1.8 per cent from the pre­vi­ous year. Long-term ben­e­fi­cia­ries, in­clud­ing re­tirees, sur­vivors, and in­va­lid­i­ty claimants, ac­count­ed for 96 per cent of ex­pen­di­ture, with re­tire­ment pen­sions alone con­sum­ing $5.41 bil­lion. Short-term ben­e­fits such as ma­ter­ni­ty and fu­ner­al grants to­talled $186.7 mil­lion, while em­ploy­ment in­jury ben­e­fits stood at $73.4 mil­lion.

In­vest­ment per­for­mance was mixed. The port­fo­lio was val­ued at $26.08 bil­lion, down 3.5 per cent from FY2024, re­flect­ing $246 mil­lion in un­re­alised loss­es and with­drawals of $1.93 bil­lion to fi­nance the deficit. Eq­ui­ty hold­ings, which make up 68 per cent of the port­fo­lio, grew mod­est­ly and out­per­formed lo­cal bench­marks, while fixed in­come as­sets fell sharply due to ma­tu­ri­ties and liq­uid­i­ty de­mands.

—An­drea Perez-Sobers