News

The National Insurance Board (NIB) is appealing to employers who have not recently filed their contributions statements (C10s) and have laid off staff to file the C10s as soon as possible so that the Unemployment Benefit (UEB) can be paid quickly. For the last year, NIB has stepped up its enforcement efforts to ensure that employers file their contribution statements and make their NIB payments. At this point, the most important issue is for NIB to have the C10 statements so that insurable wages can be calculated and credited to the employees’ accounts.

To date, NIB was able to quickly process over 12,000 Unemployment Benefit (UEB) applications related to COVID-19. However, there are another 2,000 claims in process which have been stalled because of the lack of C10 information. Without the C10 forms which contain the wage information, NIB cannot accurately determine a person’s insurable wage which is used to calculate the unemployment benefit. These claims may also be deemed ineligible by NIB’s claims system as the person may not have sufficient contributions to meet the requirements without the additional months of C10 data added.

NIB is urging all employers who are not up to date with their C10 statements to file them immediately using the MS Excel C10 spreadsheet found on NIB’s website (see Library Tab). This process allows the MS Excel C10s to be uploaded to NIB’s system quickly versus being manually keyed in when paper, handwritten or scanned C10 forms are submitted. Employers, who are able to do so, are encouraged to register with the Employer Self Service portal, via ESS@nib-bahamas.com. The ESS portal allows C10s forms to be automatically uploaded to the system and immediately credited to their employees’ accounts allowing for faster processing and payment of UEB claims.