UNJSPF Pension Townhall - Pension essentials for retirees and beneficiaries

Summary

The UNJSPF hosted a comprehensive town hall session providing essential insights for retirees and beneficiaries of the pension fund. The session covered a wide range of topics, including understanding the fund's status and structure, utilizing member self-service tools, and addressing common concerns regarding pensions, such as survivor benefits and the certificate of entitlement. It highlighted the importance of keeping informed about fund dynamics and utilizing digital tools like the Digital Certificate of Entitlement (DCE) app to streamline pension management. Participants were encouraged to utilize available resources, contact methods, and support systems for their benefits and future planning.

Highlights

• UNJSPF serves over 236,000 members globally, ensuring financial security for retirees. 🌍
• The pension fund boasts a healthy financial status with assets over 91 billion USD. 💰
• Digital Certificate of Entitlement (DCE) is a user-friendly tool for proof of life submissions. 📱
• Member self-service portal helps in accessing important documents and managing benefits. 💻
• Survivor benefits require key documents like marriage and birth certificates for processing. 📜
• Keeping contact information updated is crucial for receiving timely notifications and payments. 📨
• The emergency fund provides limited financial relief for medical and funeral expenses. 🚑

Key Takeaways

• Stay informed about your UNJSPF pension benefits for a secure retirement. 📚
• Learn to utilize digital tools like the DCE app for convenience. 📲
• Understand the importance of submitting your annual certificate of entitlement. 📑
• Keep your personal and banking information updated to ensure timely payments. 💳
• Reach out to UNJSPF's client services for any queries or assistance. 📞
• Participation in future town hall sessions can provide ongoing support and updates. 🗓️

Overview

The UNJSPF Pension Townhall was an informative event aimed at empowering retirees and beneficiaries with essential knowledge about managing their pensions. The session opened by addressing the global audience from UN offices in New York, Geneva, and Nairobi, establishing a direct line of communication with members worldwide. Participants were encouraged to engage with the vast resources and assistance offered by the fund to better manage their retirement benefits.

Throughout the town hall, detailed explanations were provided on varied topics such as the current status and operations of the pension fund, the importance of annual entitlements, and the procedures for ensuring survivor benefits. The introduction of digital tools like the Digital Certificate of Entitlement app was a central focus, highlighting their ease of use and the potential for streamlining processes for retirees and beneficiaries.

With an emphasis on transparency and accessibility, the session also detailed how members can update personal and banking details to avoid any disruption in benefits. The importance of addressing common concerns through structured client services was stressed, ensuring that members could confidently navigate any issues or inquiries related to their pension entitlements. All resources, including slides and recordings, were made available online for future reference.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 03:00: Introduction and Session Overview The chapter titled 'Introduction and Session Overview' appears to be a welcoming segment from the UN Pension Fund team, who are stationed in New York, Geneva, and Nairobi. The focus seems to be on introducing the client services team to the audience.
• 03:00 - 14:00: Pension Fund Organizational Details The chapter provides critical information for retirees and beneficiaries of the UN Pension Fund. It marks the first session conducted in a global format to engage participants worldwide, including spouses and family members. The session serves as both an introduction and a refresher for attendees, who are thanked for their participation and willingness to learn more about the pension fund.
• 14:00 - 36:00: Website Tour The chapter provides an overview of the benefits available from the fund, including disability, survivor, and retirement benefits. It emphasizes the importance of regular communication and information sharing with beneficiaries. The sessions are organized to ensure that recipients are well-informed about their rights and benefits.
• 36:00 - 60:47: Member Self Service Overview The chapter provides an overview of member self-service, with a focus on virtual accessibility to a fund. It acknowledges the limitation of not being able to meet in person but emphasizes the provision of access through virtual means. The chapter also introduces team members from the client services team located in New York, Geneva, Bangkok, and Nairobi who are available to assist with any inquiries. The emphasis is on ensuring that there is a sizable team ready to support members with questions, even if not all members are introduced in this session.
• 60:47 - 94:00: Death Related Matters and Survivor Benefits In this chapter, the focus is on 'Death Related Matters and Survivor Benefits'. The transcript addresses the importance of maintaining privacy and security, especially concerning personal cases. Participants are urged not to share personal details such as unique ID numbers and names together during Q&A sessions to prevent any security risks. The chapter emphasizes the utility of Q&A interactions for resolving queries while maintaining confidentiality and security.
• 94:00 - 118:00: Certificate of Entitlement The chapter titled 'Certificate of Entitlement' introduces the concept and purpose of the Certificate of Entitlement, which likely pertains to a topic involving secured transactions or ownership rights. The speaker encourages questions of a general nature that relate to the topic being discussed, aiming to address queries within the context of the presentation. They mention that the session will cover several topics comprehensively and hope that most questions will be naturally answered during the proceedings. This opening seems to set the stage for a detailed exploration of related subjects within the lecture.
• 118:00 - 151:30: Changing Address or Banking Details The chapter focuses on the preparations and changes involved in retirement, particularly regarding changing address or banking details. It highlights the mixed emotions retirees experience, from anxiety about the unknown to excitement about newfound freedom. The discussion stems from interactions with many retirees and beneficiaries, giving insight into their transition process.
• 151:30 - 176:00: Cost of Living Adjustments The chapter discusses the concept of fulfillment and freedom in retirement, emphasizing the role of the pension fund in ensuring a stable monthly income for retirees and beneficiaries. It highlights the importance of having financial security and coverage for survivors in the event of unforeseen circumstances. Overall, the chapter underscores the goal of the pension fund to contribute to a happy and healthy retirement.
• 176:00 - 193:00: UN Pension Fund Emergency Fund The chapter titled "UN Pension Fund Emergency Fund" outlines the content to be covered, primarily focusing on the events of death of a retiree or a death in service. It mentions that the discussion will include relevant subtopics and acknowledges the joint effort by the team in preparing the presentation. The chapter introduces the first topic as an overview of the fund.
• 193:00 - 210:00: Contacting the UN Pension Fund The chapter titled 'Contacting the UN Pension Fund' provides an update on the activities of the pension fund, including the current membership and funding status. It further explores practical aspects, particularly focusing on the website, guiding users on where to locate useful information during retirement or for survivors.
• 210:00 - 218:00: Closing Remarks and Future Sessions The chapter focuses on the benefits and disability benefits available to members, particularly those receiving regular monthly payments. It highlights the differences in the member self-service portal for retired members compared to when they were active participants in the fund. The summary emphasizes the usefulness of certain tabs in the member self-service portal that are especially beneficial for members during retirement.

UNJSPF Pension Townhall - Pension essentials for retirees and beneficiaries Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 good day good morning good afternoon maybe good evening um we are joining you here from the UN pension fund in New York and Geneva um also from Nairobi and we are the team of the client services in the UN pension fund uh giving you today
• 00:30 - 01:00 um essential information that we deem essential for retirees and beneficiaries of the UN pension fund thank you very much for joining this is the first session that we do do in This Global format for our retirees and beneficiaries worldwide if you're here with your spouse and or family members we welcome everyone and we are grateful for you to take this time um to learn or maybe you know already
• 01:00 - 01:30 um about your status while in retirement or while in receipt of a benefit from the fund whether that is a disability benefit or a survivors benefit or of course a form of retirement benefit um we have started organizing these sessions this year because we want to make sure that we provide information regularly and we connect with you all in this manner it is of course not as as
• 01:30 - 02:00 perfect and nice as it would be if we could be in a room together and in person however at least we hope that this will give you some access to the fund and with this I also introduce all the team members from the client services team in New York in Geneva in Bangkok and in Nairobi who are all here to help answer your questions it's not the full team of everyone but um we are a large team of people so that if you have questions that you would like to
• 02:00 - 02:30 ask in the Q&A chat window that you may see up in your screen it says Q&A um that team is available and will do its best to answer your questions I will say that um number one please don't ask questions about personal cases because we do not want you to share um your credentials your unique ID number and name together that is never a good idea as you probably know because we want to keep that safe
• 02:30 - 03:00 and secure um so question should be if you have any of General nature and ideally if they could be connected to what I'm talking about that would be best because we will go over a number of topics today and um hopefully the questions you have are actually answered when we're going through the slides and the chapters about those topics um let me sorry I don't know whether my
• 03:00 - 03:30 screen moves try again first of all this is kind of what we imagine uh based on the many retirees that we had the great pleasure of meeting and beneficiaries we see that especially for retirement that we have a lot of our colleagues when they separate some of them are a little bit anxious because they don't know what lays ahead some are very very happy and look forward to what comes in the next chapter of being a little bit more free with your time how you organize it but
• 03:30 - 04:00 overall this is just kind of like a thought cloud of what we often see when we interact with our retirees and beneficiaries is said there's a different kind of fulfillment and um Freedom maybe in retirement so ideally we hope that the pension fund can contribute to you enjoying a happy and healthy retirement and that you have of course an income that is stable you receive it every month and for Survivor that you are covered um in the event of
• 04:00 - 04:30 the death of our retiree or of course of a death in service so with that said um what are we going to talk about today we are going to cover these topics and some of these chapters include subtopics that also might be of relevance to you and by the way shout out to all those who prepared this presentation because it's a joint effort that we do here in the fund um so we're going to talk about first a little bit about the fund so
• 04:30 - 05:00 just that you have an update on what your pension fund is up to in terms of activities but also of course um what our membership looks like these days funding status and then we go on and look at more uh practical matters let's say we will talk about the website and I will take you in a bit of a journey on where on the website you can find information that is useful for you while in retirement or in receipt of survivors
• 05:00 - 05:30 benefits or a disability benefit and we will talk about member self-service specifically for you who are in receipt of regular monthly payments your member self- service if you have used it you know looks different than it looked when you were a participant in the fund um so we'll just highlight the the the tabs in member Self Service that we think are especially useful for you while in retirement and how they can serve you we
• 05:30 - 06:00 will then move on to uh death related matters and survivors benefits we receive a lot of questions from our retirees and even from our participants while in service um who want to be sure that they prepare and set everything up the best way they can for their potential survivors so we want to give you a bit of an overview of where you can find important information on the website and how you could possibly
• 06:00 - 06:30 prepare to put that in to the site somewhere with your will maybe where you have your papers so that when the time comes and if the time comes that a Survivor needs to look and inform the pension fund of the death of a pension fund member that they know what to do whom to contact and also have an idea of what the process is um to forther fund to implement survivors benefits then we will look at the certificate of entitlement exercise as
• 06:30 - 07:00 you all probably know you have to submit every year a proof of life to the fund so that we can be sure that we have to continue paying you your regular monthly payments that's it is an important exercise also to ensure the Financial Security of the fund so that we don't pay benefits to someone who's no longer entitled or who has passed away we will go a little bit into the digital certificate of entitlement which is
• 07:00 - 07:30 um as some or maybe all of you know a new way and an option for um retirees and beneficiaries to provide their proof of life in the form of a biometric picture in a digital certificate of entitlement mobile app so we just want to clarify a little bit more about this dce digital certificate of entitlement mobile app um so that you feel more inform formed you have a better idea if
• 07:30 - 08:00 you haven't used it yet what that is and whether you want to try and use it we advertise this dce very much because we think it's actually really user friendly once you have successfully set up um the dce up and you could then year after year issue your biometric picture and submit your proof of life to the fund in a manner that doesn't involve any paper so we'll talk about those two
• 08:00 - 08:30 aspects of the certificate of entitlement we will also of course talk about how you can submit your CE your certificate of entitlement if you do not want to or you cannot use the digital CE app then we look at some practical aspects of change of address or changing your payment instructions your banking details and how to do that and we talk briefly about cost of living adjustment
• 08:30 - 09:00 um just the concept of how does a fund adjust for cost of living over time how does it adjust your benefits what can you expect and finally we'll have a look at the UN Pension Fund emergency fund which is a fund that in cases of financial hardship may be able to make onetime um exceptional payments from that emergency fund specific conditions apply so we just want want to highlight
• 09:00 - 09:30 that this fund exists and for you to have an idea of um what the conditions are and where you can find of course more information and then in the end of course we're going to have a look at how you can best contact us so these are the topics we're going to cover today um again thank you for being here it is going to take about two hours from now um to go over these topics and I can only thank you for taking the time to attend this session
• 09:30 - 10:00 just so you know the recording of this session and the PowerPoint presentation will be shared on our website um under uh I will show you where under the website web page where we advertise these regular monthly pension Town Halls where you can then access both the recording and this document in the future at any point and finally we have the same session as this one today in
• 10:00 - 10:30 French next month on the 12th of June um so that's it and we shall go in and start talking about a bit more about the fund so at this point today in 2023 the fund is serving over 236,000 members worldwide um you may be aware that we serve 24 members organizations we had 25
• 10:30 - 11:00 organizations last year but this year that one organization is a special Tribunal for Lebanon closed and we are now down to 24 member organizations with 149,000 a little bit more actually closer to 150,000 active participants staff members who are paying contributions to the fund and that is an increase of over 4% from 2022 in the number of of
• 11:00 - 11:30 participants and we have over 86,000 recipients of periodic benefits meaning of retirement survivors and disability benefits so over 86,000 members in the fund receiving benefits at this time from the fund 177% of those benefits are paid under the so-called two track system so for those of you who are on the two track you know very well what that means um that is a decline we
• 11:30 - 12:00 had a larger number in the past but we see that currently less members are joining the twoot track system because it is less beneficial than it was in the past at this point just to clarify that we are not today talking about the two Tru why because we have an entire session dedicated to the two track that took place actually um during the months
• 12:00 - 12:30 of April and May one in French one in English and those two track uh virtual Town Halls were were recorded and are available on our website so if you're interested in the two track then please visit our website where you can access the recording and the um documents relating to the presentation um for the two track presentation so in terms of funding the fund um the UN pension fund as of 17
• 12:30 - 13:00 may this year had um a value of over 91 billion US that is an increase from the same time last year of several billion that is a current funding status um I do not yet have the official numbers for the contributions received and the benefits paid in 2023 so I'm sharing here the numbers for 2022 we do expect that the numbers are
• 13:00 - 13:30 slightly higher in 2023 but they have not yet been officially communicated the year end exercise is just closing or just closed so in 2022 the fund received contributions in the amount of just over $ 3.12 billion US and the fund had to make make payments in the amount of just over 3.13 billion us so there was a slight SL deficit um which of course was um filled
• 13:30 - 14:00 by using a tiny bit of the money from the market value of the fund overall the fund is in a very healthy situation well funded and Well on track to pay benefits for the long term into the future to all those who are entitled not only you who are currently entitled but also those of course who are currently members of the fund and who will expect to receive some
• 14:00 - 14:30 form of payout from the fund in the future for um investment information please visit our website because we in pension Administration where our client services team is um working we are not investment experts we are informed but we are not the right people to give you information on the Investments of the fund so for that I would very much invite you to please visit the investment pages of the website where you can find more detailed information
• 14:30 - 15:00 than what you see here in terms of where where we pay benefits um I don't know from where where you are joining us today we pay benefits nearly in every country in the world um I think currently we're paying in probably 190 plus countries you can see the distribution of where we pay most here you can see that there's definitely uh a big big number the biggest number of payments being made in the United United States um followed by
• 15:00 - 15:30 countries um Canada is a big country Europe of course and then of course all over the world here an overview of where we pay benefits just to give you an idea I think this is an interesting slide too it's um showing you a little bit the Aging of the UN pension fund um population specifically retirees and beneficiaries and the news is that the
• 15:30 - 16:00 life expectancy of the funds uh retirees and beneficiary population is constantly increasing so here's a comparison between 2000 year 2000 and the year 2023 and you can see the increase in life expectancy over time also of course the number of benefits that we pay this is more about the Aging Trend in terms of what are the numbers of benefits we pay to related to the age group of
• 16:00 - 16:30 people but I can tell you also that um as per actoral valuations that the fund does every two years the life expectancy of the fund population is increasing over time and it is currently somewhere around year um age 88 89 I think for retirees that are male the men and over 90 I think I think it's actually 991 years of age for women but
• 16:30 - 17:00 here what you see is in terms of benefits that we pay so of course the benefit in total the number of benefits we pay has increased since the year 2000 but the proportion of the um in which age group we pay has definitely shifted and we at this time pay the largest number of benefits to those who are in the age group between the ages 70 to 79 over 25,000 benefits are paid to that
• 17:00 - 17:30 age group and Then followed by those in the age group um 6269 over 23,000 benefits and followed by those age group 80 to 89 over 15,000 and if you compare that to the numbers at which we paid in 2000 you see the increase in benefits of fund Pace but also the proportions and and then finally we have an eight-fold increase
• 17:30 - 18:00 in the age group of those that are 90 and older so you see that currently we pay over 4,000 benefits to those who are 90 years or older so definitely the fund is aware and sees and knows that we have to expect to pay benefits for a longer and longer period in time after separation into um retirement and that includes of course
• 18:00 - 18:30 survivors otherwise what is going on in the fund the fund has processed benefits um for new beneficiaries and for survivors um and it has outperformed its Benchmark of implementing benefits within 15 business days from receipt of all required documents for a case of a new beneficiary um with over 92 benefits implemented within that time frame um in terms of modernization the
• 18:30 - 19:00 fund is proud that the digital certificate of entitlement that had some I would say Growing Pains at the beginning um where the the up was not as performing as it is now and it has been improved tremendously over time um the digital certificate of entitlement app is now being used by more than 30,000 beneficiaries of the fund out of more
• 19:00 - 19:30 than 80,000 who have to provide their proof of life so the fund is aiming at increasing that number by doing very active Outreach about the digital certificate of entitlement and by dedicating resources to supporting any technical or other issues with a digital CE so that you get the help you need when you need it either for enrollment or for any issues you may encounter with the digital CE but this CE by those that
• 19:30 - 20:00 are using it and who have used it more than once I would say is found to be truly user friendly and useful we also know that some people don't like it and that is absolutely fine of course if there are issues with issuing your photo and it's just painful to use we understand that and in that case there is always the option of using the paper based CE form in terms of pension payments um the
• 20:00 - 20:30 monthly payroll has continued and has been issued without interruption since the funds Inception basically so it's been issued on time unfortunately we know that sometimes people do not receive their benefits because of some disruptions in uh global payment channels that has happened of course in some countries like Russia Ukraine um some countries in uh Sudan but generally in terms of payroll the fund has made
• 20:30 - 21:00 Regular payments on the payroll without any disruption um since its Inception in terms of cola there was a cola for 2024 an increase of 3.4% of the benefits paid under the US dollar track um that has been applied since the 1 of April this year and of course there have been adjustments also um to the two track payments that the fund makes
• 21:00 - 21:30 the funds care strategy maybe you have heard about this this is basically what is guiding us in our strategy in terms of how the fund functions how we look into U modernizing the fund Etc and this care strategy that we had already for the years 21 to 23 under the current uh sepa the current um executive of pension Administration Rosemary mle has been extended and adjusted for the years 24
• 21:30 - 22:00 um and basically up to years 30 2030 and it is based on the pillars of being client focused action oriented relationship Builder and efficiency driven and that means that we have three pillars which indicate or guide us in where we focus our attention in terms of where we want to modernize innovate and pay special attention in improving the services that the fund provides to its
• 22:00 - 22:30 membership and all stakeholders we are focusing on simplifying the client experience and hope that we will be successful in making it easier for you to interact with the fund to receive information when you need it to receive um services from the fund when you need it and that um of course usually is we're trying to do that without increasing the resources of the fund in as much as we we can um
• 22:30 - 23:00 we you want to use and leverage technology we are also aware that technology is not always the answer to everything and that is always on the mind of pension Administration to keep in mind that given our membership and the fact that you are worldwide and with different kinds of access to technology and of course depending on your age and on your health situation more or less comfortable accessing certain forms of tech technology the fund is aware and
• 23:00 - 23:30 will continue to ensure that we serve everyone not just those who can use all forms of modern technology the fund is also looking into strengthening Partnerships with member organizations with AIX organizations retiree associations and um to modernize Services aligned with this strategy are two main projects that will impact you retire and beneficiaries and I just want
• 23:30 - 24:00 to highlight them here so that you have them on your mind even if we are not yet at stage where we have implemented them them but so that you are aware that they are in the works and that in the near future you may hear about them and the fact that they will start to be implemented and used and in that case you will experience them one is a new system that is a customer relationship or client man management and relationship system a new platform that
• 24:00 - 24:30 we are building where we want to integrate our system of query handling fully with our core system of pension Administration so that there are there is more interactivity possible more um proactiveness possible for the fund to contact you to reach out to you to provide you services but also hopefully to automate certain services in the fund so that we can focus our team members on
• 24:30 - 25:00 working on services that cannot be automated and where we then can respond to you faster and provide services faster so that system is going to be called or is called unj SPF connect and in the future when we implement it you will see that because when you will contact us via the official channels that you can access on our website you will see that you will have an OP option to connect to us via member Self Service
• 25:00 - 25:30 that is not going to happen in the next couple of months but we aim at that being the case early as of late this or early next year so when you hear unjspf connect that is a system that hopefully will make it easier to interact with the fund and provide you Services faster the other system that we will have to implement is a multiactor authentication to access the unjspf
• 25:30 - 26:00 member Self Service why multiactor authentication to secure your data and your access to members of service and ensure that you are the one who is accessing it and not someone else that you don't want to access it in other words multifactor authentication is going to be used in order to make the funds members Self Service safer and more secure not to say
• 26:00 - 26:30 that it is not safe and secure but the fund is aware of increasing um malv volent activities worldwide with regard to um system breaches and hacking and so on and I'm sure you're aware of that too spam but worse than that fishing attempts and so on so all of that the fund is aware and wants to make sure that your access to the fund systems is secure as it can be
• 26:30 - 27:00 and that will involve that you will have to provide two ways of um identification before you can get into the system and this is something that you may already be used to when you access your bank online or maybe your health care provider online so systems that have data that relates to your case usually try to protect that data and will now make these multifactor Authentication or MFA requirements part of accessing
• 27:00 - 27:30 systems again this is not yet in place but the fund is very strongly working on implementing multiactor authentication of course we will communicate to you all once we are ready to implement multiactor authentication as well as unjspf connect some benefits of unjspf connect I'm listing them here but truly you can
• 27:30 - 28:00 have access to this presentation once you um it is posted on our web page you can go into the details I don't want to bore you at this point with these kind of information about something that is not that yet in place but the purpose here is just to say that this system the client relationship management system that we are working on will improve services to clients you the members of the fund it will also hopefully and that's
• 28:00 - 28:30 certainly the intention make the work for the staff in the fund better um with having easier access to data and so on so that they can work more efficiently in our systems and um provide services that much um more efficiently and faster and then it UL ultimately for the fund it is going to be also an improvement because it will allow us to connect teams better internally automate certain testing
• 28:30 - 29:00 tools and so on so it's overall to increase efficiency and simplify and modernize the client experience um in the with the fund and I already mentioned the benefits of multiactor authentication incre increased security reduced risk better control over sensitive data there's a variety of authentication choices you will see phone email um text and it conforms to
• 29:00 - 29:30 best practices in the industry and finally the fund has worked a lot to improve access to information about the fund these pension Town Halls today are part of that initiative to ensure that you get access to us in this format at least um we continue we will continue holding them at least one session per month either in English or in French Plus in the future we will
• 29:30 - 30:00 also organize shorter sessions where we will just talk about one single topic and have more of a moderated um session where we address that specific topic and that is going to happen either later this year or as of early next year um the communications team in the fund is working very heavily with all members in the fund to provide you with more videos to help simplify information more web
• 30:00 - 30:30 news and the newsletters that you get hopefully um months after months with key information about what the fund is doing and that might be relevant to you the annual letter was distributed in April so you probably saw that and we have new booklets um informational booklets that have been updated or not new but updated and finally we have a new social media channel if you're using WhatsApp please subscribe to the unjspf social media channel where you can get
• 30:30 - 31:00 quick information that might be again relevant to you now in terms of website allow me to pull in the website so that I can take you on a bit of a little Tour on our website sorry my mouse is slow but it is coming so I'm pulling over the funds website
• 31:00 - 31:30 and here we are on our website you might be very familiar with a website so I'm sorry if this is something you all know already but I just want to highlight a couple of points first of all we have key information as you can see that is sliding over whether it is to just give you general information or highlight some activity that is happening um the fun by the way celebrated it's 75th birthday last year um there are
• 31:30 - 32:00 information about pension Town Hall sessions so when you visit the website this is where you will see some key information sliding through then if you scroll down you have these chapters participating separating or retiring retired or receiving benefits and under each of these chapters we have compiled key information the key web pages that might
• 32:00 - 32:30 be of relevance for you because you are in that uh category of members of the fund that are currently retired or receiving benefits so that's an easy way of accessing key web pages for your case going to the chapter that corresponds to your status with the fund if you scroll on further you have key figures about the fund the 88.8 billion US doar funding of the uh market value of the fund is the
• 32:30 - 33:00 date um was at the 30th of April we are now already at a higher level I gave you a little bit earlier the funding on 17 May which you saw was over 90 billion then you see down here news and announcements this is where we publish the latest news articles if you want more news you click on more news and you see the older news articles and then scrolling and scrolling you get get more information now generally to access the
• 33:00 - 33:30 important web pages where we really try to keep you up to dat on key information about topics that are relevant for you you can either click on for clients and then you would see all the web pages that the fund has about specific topics so that's one way of doing it or you could click as I said earlier on retired or receiving benefits or if you're a survivor click on Survivor and then it would open
• 33:30 - 34:00 only the web pages or only sorry not open it would take you to a page where we compiled only the most relevant web pages for that category of members of the fund so it's up to you whatever you deem might be useful and if you look at the web pages there is information about after have service health insurance basically to tell you that this is not administered by the fund yes if you instructed your Ashi provider to take
• 34:00 - 34:30 money out of your monthly pension then the fund will do that at the request from Ashi but that's it we don't have insight into your health insurance premium payments Etc so anything relating to health insurance the fund is not aware um however we do know that sometimes your benefit every month fluctuates because the ashy premium fluctuates and then in that case again all we could tell you if you come to us saying why is my benefit lower or maybe
• 34:30 - 35:00 higher um all we could tell you is to say it's probably ASI related because we can see that the premium last month was a bit lower than it is this month but why the premium for Ashi change the fund would never know so ideally you should check in your members s Service what the reason might be for a benefit fluctuation um and if you see it has to do with a premium for Ashi go to your health insurance
• 35:00 - 35:30 provider so then we have a tab about authentication of signatures and documents here we explain under what circumstances we actually need your signature to be authenticated and if so what is proper signature authentication who is entitled to authenticate your signature and accepted by the fund as an authenticating official so all of that is actually explained on this web page then we have the page on the
• 35:30 - 36:00 certificate of entitlement where we keep you up to date on what is going on for the current year certificate of entitlement activities plus any pre-suspension activities so another page that is important to keep an eye on because there you will see when do we dispatch the certificate of entitlement forms when do we start doing the pre-suspension exercise for those who didn't return a certificate of entitlement and so on and just generally
• 36:00 - 36:30 Q&A and um information about this there's information about child's benefit cost of living adjustment deaths how to notify the fund of the death of a un pension fund member we have a whole web page on the digital certificate of entitlement a page on divorce the emergency fund of the unjspf information on what could be a reason for fluctuation of monthly benefit
• 36:30 - 37:00 payments more general information a whole web page on legal Guardianship and Estates also very important here we explain at what point the fund would require legal Guardianship and if so what kind of legal guardian does the fund recognize the fund does not recognize power of attorney or enduring power of attorney we only recognize a court appointed legal guardian when a
• 37:00 - 37:30 beneficiary of the fund a retiree or beneficiary is no longer able to exercise their own administrative activities when they are for reasons of heals no longer able to handle their own Affairs it has to be a courta appointed legal guardian in order for the fund to take action based on legal guardian instructions why because the fund wants to protect the retiring and beneficiary and ensure that it is only a person that
• 37:30 - 38:00 has been authorized by a court or an according auen uh according um official authority to take action on your behalf there could be otherwise abuse of authority if someone who is not court appointed gets that um Power we have information about what to do in the case of non-receipt of monthly payments when that happens what should you do how to contact the fund with what information to ensure that we can assist
• 38:00 - 38:30 you the fastest possible we have information about power of attorney and the fact that we do not recognize it also information about re-employment of retirees and finally information about survivors benefits very important of course taxation of benefits here we really just say that the fund does not provide advice on taxes we cannot do that because we cannot keep a breast of
• 38:30 - 39:00 tax legislation in over 190 countries where we pay benefits um but there's a tax guide that might be of some use to some of you and then we have information on the twoot track system of course information that is relevant for those who might inquire about the two track if you're interested in it um or those who are on the to track if you need to know what happens if I move country Etc and then some information about updating
• 39:00 - 39:30 your marital status if you get married while in retirement or um maybe get a divorced and or your spouse died and finally updating payment instruction and personal information other than marital status so you see there's a whole bunch of tabs and web pages that we make that we created just to help you get information as fast as possible when you needed and of course all of this information exists in
• 39:30 - 40:00 English and in French if you click in the top left corner you can go to the French version of each of the pages of the website that is the for clients um let's say menu item under Investments you can of course get information on the Investments of the fund specifically if you want to know the fund performance over time or how the fund invests some information about actal matters for
• 40:00 - 40:30 the fund risk management so there is a whole bunch of information that you may want to visit if you haven't done that yet and under historical fund performance you would see that the fund constantly Updates this page to provide the latest status of funding I know this is not very um easy to read you can make it bigger by clicking here and then you move around a little bit so you can see that the current value of the fund is over 91 billion
• 40:30 - 41:00 us and then we have resources and what is this this is really about giving you more kind of tools um to help you with navigating pension questions here you have the regulations and rules you have information about your un pension fund member self-service reports publications of course all the forms but remember all the pension forms are also inside your member Self Service where they are
• 41:00 - 41:30 actually pre-completed with your name and your unique ID number if you use the forms from the website they are not pre-completed it's always better to use a form that you downloaded from your member self service because then it has a barcode that contains your information plus it is pre-completed with your unique ID number and your name and that just ensures that um we index it correctly when it reaches us and take action as quick as we can so that's for
• 41:30 - 42:00 forms we have e-learning modules that anyone can take in their own time when they are interested and those e-learning modules include one that is called in retirement and that in retirement module contains information similar to what we're talking about today then the web page about a pension Town Hall sessions like the one today this page is constantly updated with the next upcoming dates for new sessions the
• 42:00 - 42:30 topics and um generally what it will the topic will be um what topics will be covered um and of course it will include information about past events with links to the recording and the presentation of that past event so here is where we will post the recording of this session plus the um presentation so you can access that in the future here without any problem um and then as I said we will
• 42:30 - 43:00 post the link to connect to the next session on the 12th of June in French for in retirement um once we're done with this session so we only connect we only provide one Link at the time so currently here's the link for today's session but we will post the link for the 12th June session as soon as we get that link so that people on the 12th of June who want to attend the French session can easily do that there's some
• 43:00 - 43:30 FAQs about the sessions and that's basically it so that is under resources and under pension Town Hall sessions and then we have access to all the videos that Z fund has produced um there are many many videos here you can see and these videos are just a few minutes long and might really help you understand topics because they have illustration and of course they are also narrated and all
• 43:30 - 44:00 the videos exist in French in English and in Spanish so while Spanish is not an official language of the fund in the sense it's not a working language and therefore we don't have the resources to Pro to provide town halls in Spanish or um provide generally Communication in Spanish we have made all these videos available in Spanish to help those whose language is Spanish um understand these
• 44:00 - 44:30 key topics for which we have videos so I would encourage you to check out the topics for which we have videos and to watch the videos in the language of your preference these videos are also linked on the related topic web pages so if you go to the web page on survivors benefits you will find the video about survivors benefits on that page or as I showed you you have this page with all the videos then there's a
• 44:30 - 45:00 page with informative booklets also again about all the kinds of topics that we cover and then we have all the exchange rates Consumer Price Index in adjustment and cost of living factors in a special web page where you can check out um these factors if you're on the two track uh for the country where you reside so if you reside in Austria you can just simply select your country and in that case um you will see
• 45:00 - 45:30 once it loads that you can see the most recent exchange rates the Consumer Price Index adjustments for Austria which was by the way 5.6% in April and so on so this is for those of you who are on the two track you can find that information and for the United States of course you can also find this information for those of you who are under the US dollar track if you're interested to know the history of all of this data so here you see
• 45:30 - 46:00 latest adjustment was 3.4% for the US dollar track anyone paid under the US dollar track regardless of which currency you are paid in if your benefit is adjusted based on the movements of the Consumer Price Index of the United States you received this 3.4% adjustment of your benefit even if your benefit is paid in a currency different um other than the US dollar so this is also under
• 46:00 - 46:30 resources and then under resources you have link to faix the Federation of the associations of former International civil servants and this is a really useful resource because it gives you access to information about this Federation of retiree associations of retirees of the UN pension fund and of course survivors might also be part of these Association ations um at the bottom of this page if you scroll down
• 46:30 - 47:00 under about ffix you have the first dot bullet where they explain that there are currently 34 member associations of ffix all over the world so 64 countries have a retiree Association some retire associations are more active than others we know this but if you're interested to see whether you would like to join a retiree Association which are very
• 47:00 - 47:30 valued partners of the pension fund and a very important um how to say advocate for retiree and beneficiary um causes I would say visit this member associations of ffix Link voila so I clicked on that and it took me to the page where ffix provides all contact details for each of the associations that exist currently in the
• 47:30 - 48:00 64 countries where they exist so you could check whether in your country there is a retiree Association and if for example you are joining today from Costa R and you want to possibly uh inform yourself about the retiree Association in Costa Rica you click here and it takes you to the contact details for that retiree Association usually there are email addresses and tele telephone numbers plus um yeah I mean I guess the key contact details where you
• 48:00 - 48:30 could reach out and then get information about the retire Association so that is just so you're aware that sorry on our website you can access that information um by going to excuse me resources and there the before last bullet or topic um sorry menu item is faix that's where you can find that link now about us obviously is about the
• 48:30 - 49:00 fund I'm not going to go through all of this but I will stop here at contact us it's a very important tab here we publicize all the contact channels of the UN pension fund when you click here it will take you to the UN pension fund contact us web page on this web page you can get information about how to correctly contacts the fund and submit written queries here you can send us a
• 49:00 - 49:30 message so if you want to send us a message you select retire beneficiary you tell us what you would like to get help with let's say with the annual certificate of entitlement you click on this topic you see that immediately it tells you you can find more information about this topic here annual certificate of entitlement if you click there it it will take you to that page and immediately maybe you read this
• 49:30 - 50:00 page first because maybe it actually answers your question otherwise if not I have to go back sorry then I lost my let me go back here sorry so then if you didn't get the information you need on that web page you provide your unique ID number whatever that may be I'm doing a fake number here your title in my case it
• 50:00 - 50:30 would be miss my name Christine and then my email I'm just pretending BL blop put your email is important because we will need it to contact you ideally please use the email that you have recorded with the fund at some point if you hopefully have your phone number and here please use the format plus oops sorry I not that happened plus to show that it's an international number then wherever you are your
• 50:30 - 51:00 country code in my case it's one and then your number etc etc etc so once you've done that for retirees can you please provide and you have to provide your country of residence so let's say I reside in Albania that doesn't connect with my phone number but just as an example you don't need to F met to put your um former employing organization that is not needed and then you tell us what you
• 51:00 - 51:30 need help with did you receive my C form for 2023 done and then you submit your query by the way if you don't know whether we received your C form you can go into your member Self Service where you can actually check whether we received it or not um but let's say you sent us this message um you just have to say I'm not a robot and then you submit it okay this
• 51:30 - 52:00 is a correct way of sending messages to the fund why because these messages fall into buckets on the other side depending on where you're writing for from it will be sent either to our Geneva or to our New York team and then um depending on the topic you're inquiring about there will be Specialists for the topic accessing that bucket and it doesn't matter whether some one you know some members of our team are in or out maybe on annual leave or sick leave or
• 52:00 - 52:30 whatever there are always people looking at every bucket into which we receive queries in other words this is a secure way of submitting your query both for the data that you submit but also in the sense that we will be able to receive it to ensure that someone is looking at it in the best delays and replies to you with the relevant and and um correct answer okay
• 52:30 - 53:00 so that's how do you submit your written queries please do not write to individual members of the fund if they are out for an extended period or on Mission or something they may not see your message however if you submit it here as indicated then it doesn't matter who's in or out because there's always a team a core team working on the entirety of queries we receive now if you say I actually don't want to write I want to call then we have our call center or contact center
• 53:00 - 53:30 and um depending on whether you are more aligned with New York hours or more aligned with Geneva hours you can choose whichever number you want to call it will reach the same contact center which functions 24 hours 5 days a week so our contact center provides services for um 24 hours every day Monday to Friday we also have over 65 toll-free numbers if you're calling from any of
• 53:30 - 54:00 the countries listed here use the toll-free number so you are not paying for the call okay and then under New York and Geneva for those of you who might be in New York or Geneva or visit at some point in that case if you wanted to visit us in person we have walk-in services in New York and in Geneva and the hours for walk-in services are advertised here in New York it is Tuesdays and Thursdays
• 54:00 - 54:30 12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. every week and in Geneva the visiting time is um also Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 100 p.m. every Tuesday and Thursday local time of course keep a look before you visit always check the website to make sure we are not exceptionally closed we are not often closed but if there's a snowstorm or I don't know
• 54:30 - 55:00 during the pandemic for example we had to close offices and we had a few people come and visit the offices and they were closed to clients we were still working but we weren't allowed to receive clients um and in that case of course it's better if you check beforehand so that you're not coming to the office and there's no one to assist you um so just make sure you always check quickly on the website to make sure you're aware of the offic walk in service hours and days and then just any special
• 55:00 - 55:30 announcement and finally on our website and that concludes our tour of the website we have the Urgent assistance menu urgent assistance is for two main topics one to report that your regular monthly benefit payment stopped for some reason and to request for Urgent assistance from the fund and help to reinstate the payments and the other topic is to
• 55:30 - 56:00 report the deaths of a un pension fund member to the fund so if one of these topics are the reason for contacting the fund it is helpful to First Look at the Urgent assistant page which is the only page that exists in English French Spanish Chinese Russian and Arabic the six official languages um of the United Nations so you click on urgent assistance in the language of your choice and there you
• 56:00 - 56:30 will have number one information about non-receipt by a retiree or beneficiary of their regular monthly payments basically when your payments stopped we explain what you should do what you should submit to the fund and how to best contact us there's a special mailbox so that we can take action as a priority for your case a payment stopped case or a death notification are the most important cases for the fund and we
• 56:30 - 57:00 will always get to those first so we give them priority over any other query that we receive and under number two we have information about deaths of a retiree or beneficiary and how to notify the fund what information we need and where to write and how to contact us and again there is a special mailbox that we advertise here where people can write directly if they don't want to use the
• 57:00 - 57:30 contact form so that is it for the website I hope this gives you a good idea of how we build the website but also what information we have here and really the entirety of the website was designed with you and our participants in mind to find ways of making it easy to find information is it perfect probably not are we working still on improving everything yes always we are trying to improve the language we are trying to
• 57:30 - 58:00 improve with providing more resource material more um documents that we provide on topic Pages tutorials videos um we are creating one Pages for survivors we are creating one Pages for new participants so there's always work going on and our Communications team is very very active it's a very small team but they have created a lot of content to ensure that you and participants get
• 58:00 - 58:30 as much information in a format that is easy to absorb and easy to find um when you need it and in the future we will hopefully also have more interactive features that allow you to find information even faster all right that's it for the website um and that brings me to member Self Service the next topic member self service is a very important tool that everyone who is a member of the fund should use in order to register for member Self Service you can first of all
• 58:30 - 59:00 visit resources about member Self Service here you get general information about member self service including what each tab under member self service is for what is the dispersement tab for very important tab it's basically your pay slip months after months what is a document tab for again very important tab because this is where you find your
• 59:00 - 59:30 official benefit letter um your C form etc etc eforms important tab because this is where you will get access to all the official forms of the UN pension fund pre-completed with your name and your unique ID number and a barcode that helps us IND index it to your file as fast as possible the proof documents tab very important this is where you can track whether the fund received your annual
• 59:30 - 60:00 certificate of entitlement form not the digital certificate of entitlement that is different but if you submitted your form either via member selfs service or you sent your C form To Us by mail once we have recorded it in our system it will be visible in your proof document Tab and finally there is the emergency fund tab where if you have an emergency fund request you could submit it and
• 60:00 - 60:30 there is a two track tab which I don't see but it should be here sorry estimates that's where it is I'm sorry so there is um there are estimates that include the two track estimate um for you retirees and beneficiaries if you're interested and finally very important tab MSS document upload here is where you can upload documents like a form that you printed dated and hand signed and then made a scan copy of a PDF or a
• 60:30 - 61:00 JPEG or something and then you can upload it in members of service back to the font in that case you don't need to send us the hard copy by mail so the document upload tab is very important the same goes for the C form you can upload a hand signed and dated C form in its scanned version back to the fund using this tab you don't need to use mail okay so here on the website we explain to you what member self service is about
• 61:00 - 61:30 how it can serve you um and of course practical information on how to register so there are guides there's a member selfservice video there is explanation on how to set up your account how to recover your password Etc there are tutorials documents step-by-step guides how to set up how to register Etc again in the three languages English French and
• 61:30 - 62:00 Spanish and if you are registering and you don't remember your unique ID number then there is information on how you can obtain your unique ID number by simply writing to this email address so information about members of service on this web page once you have registered and you have created your password and your username and you have given of course Associated your personal email account with your member s Service then
• 62:00 - 62:30 in the future you can simply click in this tab here on the website so if you go to the website immediately you have member Self Service login to get quickly to member self service and then you click on login and there you go if you can't remember either your password or your username at the time of wanting to join member s Service just go to forgot username or forgot forgot password it will help you reset your password or username and of
• 62:30 - 63:00 course if ever sorry I'm looking for a about yeah if ever um you need help because you just can't reset your password or user name in that case you can reach out the fund by writing to MSS support at unjspf 24 hours five time five days a week and they respond usually within the same day
• 63:00 - 63:30 or if not by the next day so if you need help reach out to them that's what they are there for now let me go back to the presentation I'm going to skip the next pages and we are here now in member selfservice so member selfservice um as mentioned here is useful to you on a day daily basis or not a daily but a regular basis to access your certificate of
• 63:30 - 64:00 entitlement if you're not on the tut track you can access the form under the documents tab to submit your certificate of entitlement to the fund or any other document you want to submit via the MSS document upload tab to track receipt of your certificate of entitlement under the proof document tab to submit other like an emergency fund requ request to print your official pension forms and other
• 64:00 - 64:30 activities I already showed you this is what members Self Service looks like for a retiree or beneficiary um these are the tabs that would be available to you and I already mentioned um most of them I will say that dispersement is one of the most important because this is where you can track months after months every payment ever made to you by the fund it will include deduction for after service health insurance premium if that is a
• 64:30 - 65:00 case for your case so you would even be able to see how much was taken out for a given months from your pension um for health insurance purposes so again if you see a fluctuation in the benefit amount always check whether it could be because the health insurance premium changed and if that was the case then of course contact your health insurance if you need more information but the dispersement tab is basically as I said your salary SL if you needed to change the email address associated with your
• 65:00 - 65:30 account um then you would go in the top right corner of your excuse me of your me of your member Self Service where you see last log on and then next to it account you click on account and under account you would have the options to change your email address to change your password so remember that if you needed to change your address for some reason go up into your member self-service account top right corner to make the
• 65:30 - 66:00 changes that you want to make so I already mentioned what each of the tabs in your member self service is about um I will highlight the address tab here you can change your address provided you're are not on the two track if you're not on the two track and you want to change your address you can do that in member Self Service simply log into member Self Service click on
• 66:00 - 66:30 address and then go through the steps to update your address it's I think pretty intuitive um but again it's only available for those who are not paid under the two track if you are on the two track you have to reach out to the fund and submit form pf23 M to change your address you can upload that form once you have completed dated and hand signed it inside member service member Self Service document upload but you cannot do the actual change of address
• 66:30 - 67:00 immediately in member self service if you are paid under the two track I will also stop a bit more on documents documents includes information like your official benefit letter if you separated it since 2015 that benefit letter contains all the information about your benefit since when you're entitled um what the amount of your own contributions was to the fund and uh potential additional payments for
• 67:00 - 67:30 children um that you receive together with your benefit so if you need that letter and you separate it since August 2015 it is in your member Self Service probably of course if it is not there contact the fund and we will give it to you documents will also contain your quarter de Cola statement your statement of benefits for tax purposes if you had requested that in the past then it will be posted every year um probably early in the year for those who are on the tax
• 67:30 - 68:00 year um January uh who who need a tax statement for January to December of a given year um in your member self service and then if you generate a two track estimate the estimate itself will be shown under the document tuab and then again the certificate of entitlement form will be posted under documents if you are on the US dollar TR if you're paid under the two track you cannot access your MSS C
• 68:00 - 68:30 form in MSS it's not available but everyone can submit their documents back to the fund using the MSS document upload feature which is part of the items the menu items you have in member Self Service as mentioned here under the third bullet all right so again you have this presentation available on our website within the next couple of days if you need go to go back and read this in more
• 68:30 - 69:00 detail or you can go to the website under the about member self- service menu item and you can read about each of the tabs to understand better how they can serve you the following Pages illustrate um how to change an address how to read the dispersement page of member Self Service how to what the documents tab looks like and what documents you may want to find there and then the pro document tab
• 69:00 - 69:30 which shows you whether we received your certificate of entitlement for a given year um how to read that by the way under the proed documents tab for the certificate of entitlement it gives you the received date of the document by the fund it then says accepted date ignore the accepted date that is part of what our system has as an as a field but it's actually not required we don't need to accept your C we do a signature
• 69:30 - 70:00 verification but even if you don't see the accepted date it's good enough that we received your CE to not suspend your benefit if there's an issue with your C form we will reach out to you but don't worry if there's no accepted date populated with a date that has no meaning the only date that is important here is the received date and then how to submit an emergency fund request in member Self Service okay
• 70:00 - 70:30 so once again the about member Self Service page on our website will give you more information if you need it we are now going to look into death related matters and survivors benefits um so you have videos watch the videos there's a video about survivors benefits that explains the different kinds of survivors benefits the fund pays whether that is a surviving spouse's benefit surviving divorced
• 70:30 - 71:00 spouses benefit under very specific circumstances surviving child's benefits Etc and then there is a video to explain um what would be relevant if you are a survivor of a pension fund retiree or beneficiary basically it explains what you should do in case you need to report the death of a beneficiary or retiree to the UN pension fund so these two videos I would suggest that you watch them just
• 71:00 - 71:30 so you have the information and you are aware of whatever is conveyed in the video now what do you need to do if you need to inform the fund of the death of a unjspf member send an email to this specific mailbox unjspf hyphen Des related at.org or of course you can use the contact form both ways work and both cases your um your case because it is indicated as death
• 71:30 - 72:00 related will be given priority you can also call the fund if you don't want to write call the fund that works too and you need to provide key information the name of the deceased the date of birth of the deceased the date of death of the deceased ideally their unique ID number or pension fund number and their official mailing address and if possible also contact details for the surviving family so
• 72:00 - 72:30 sometimes we do have former colleagues or friends who report the deaths and they don't necessarily know all the details as many details as possible will help us ensure that we are able to stop payments and take appropriate action but the more details out of those that I just showed you the more details you have the better because it will allow the fund to act faster the most important piece then for the fund to receive as the next step is the
• 72:30 - 73:00 death certificate we must receive a death certificate excuse me apologies in order to ensure that we you know have proof that someone actually died we have a very rare cases where a bank has informed us that someone passed away and it actually wasn't true it happens very very rarely but it can happen so we don't want to
• 73:00 - 73:30 stop someone's payment um for the reason of passed away and actually of course that didn't happen that would be horrible so we need a death certificate to confirm the death and only if we have a death certificate can we move on to the next step which is to then determine who might be entitled to survivor's benefits the fund will have to determine that first and we look at our records and all the information that was reported to US during the retirees
• 73:30 - 74:00 Lifetime and why there were a member in the UN pension fund and then based on that information we normally know whether there are potential survivors children and or spouse and or ex spouse so as the case may be we then determine if there's an entitlement to survivors benefit and if that is the case we will reach out to the Survivor hopefully we have the contact details if not we make every effort to get them and then we
• 74:00 - 74:30 will request copy of marriage certificate The spouse's birth certificate proof of ID ideally a passport or some other valid government issued photo ID with a signature from the spouse or the whichever Survivor if it's not a child and then um we need them to complete a form called pens e number two and that form needs to be completed by the entitled Survivor once the fund has confirmed that someone is
• 74:30 - 75:00 entitled okay so these are the documents and that's the process that happens we receive the notification of someone who died for someone who died the fund will stop the payments of that person and determine eligibility to survivor's benefits if there are potentially overpayments because 3 months or so elapsed between the date of death and the date of inform form in the fund the fund will first have to recover the overpayments before we can make payments
• 75:00 - 75:30 to a potential Survivor in the future so but in any case the fund will receive the death notification stop the payments determine eligibility to potential survivors benefits reach out to the survivors request the supporting evidence documents and the new payment instruction form pens E2 from the Survivor the entitled Survivor or survivors and once we have received
• 75:30 - 76:00 these documents proceed to implement the benefit for the survivors or the benefits for the survivors but the starting point for all of this is we need to absolutely get a death certificate okay so it can be the copy certified copy of a death certificate or the original but we must get a death certificate this is what the form looks like that the Survivor would have to complete they have to select what kind
• 76:00 - 76:30 of Survivor they are whether they are a widow or widower or they are um a divorc surviving spouse or a spouse married after separation while in retirement or they children or even secondary dependents or in some cases recipients of a so-called residual settlement um the form must be completed dated and hand signed and the signature of the um
• 76:30 - 77:00 entitled Survivor must be authenticated by a an official who is entitled to authenticate documents and here on this page we are linking to the web page on our website that is very clear on what are who is entitled to authenticate documents normally it's either a un official or a um notary public or a government official or in some cases it could even
• 77:00 - 77:30 be a um treating physician a doctor in which case we also need a medical certificate to indicate that there is a medical connection um with the doctor but normally it should be a un official or a government official or a um notary public and the person authenticating the survivors signature will have to provide their full name official title hand sign
• 77:30 - 78:00 the document date the document in the box that is for the authentication and provide their official stamp or seal of office all of that inside the field provided on the page two of form Pence E7 there's a bit more information here on who can witness or authenticate a signature so for more information you have the information here in the
• 78:00 - 78:30 presentation processing time um of such benefits so first of all who is actually entitled to survive as benefit if we're talking about spouses if you were married at the time of Separation at the latest so you're married while you are a participant and you remained married to the same spouse until the date of your death then that spouse is entitled to survive having spouses benefit um except if you were entitled and had
• 78:30 - 79:00 elected a deferred retirement benefit with a partial lumpsum it's a very specific case and very few people have elected that kind of benefit but if you are someone who elected um before 2001 or before April 2001 a deferred retirement benefit with a partial lumpsum then your spouse is not entitled otherwise the spouse would be entitled and your spouse is also not entitled if
• 79:00 - 79:30 you marry after separation and you did not purchase an annuity for that spouse married after separation from the fund I would say in most cases spouses that you were married to at the time of separation from service and that remain married to you until your date of death are entitled there's no doubt about it how long will it take to to implement this benefit usually it's officially 15 business days 3 weeks from the date of
• 79:30 - 80:00 receipt of the complete set of required documents death certificate ID documents marriage certificate etc etc etc form um it can take up to four to six weeks um but we are talking about from the date of receipt from the full set of required documents that's 15 business days normally unfortunately there are sometimes issues sometimes we have
• 80:00 - 80:30 spouses that we didn't know about that come and say but why am I not entitled or we have several spouses claiming entitlement or we have a unclarity regarding an exp spouse that can delay um processing so I would say in the interest of your survivors make sure you submit all the documents that you can possibly submit including marriage certificates and divorce documents to the fund while you're alive so that when the time comes the fund has all the
• 80:30 - 81:00 documents it needs to determine who is entitled to what based on what documents and of course we only pay doc pay benefits based on our regulations and rules and based on proof that a person is actually entitled once we have determined entitlement we pay from the first day following the months during which the retiree died so the benefit for the months during which the Ben this retiree died the retirement benefit is actually paid in
• 81:00 - 81:30 full for that month and then the surviving survivors benefit the surviving spouses benefit kicks in as of the first day of the month following the death of the retiree how much will a surviving spouse receive if you did not take a lumpsum as part of an early or normal retirement benefit then your spouse will receive 50% of what your full pension entitlement was at the time of death so if you
• 81:30 - 82:00 received $10,000 during that month as a retiree your spouse would be entitled to $5,000 as a surviving spouse for Life as a surviving spouse however if you took your maximum lump sum as part of an early or a normal retirement benefit and use the retiree therefore produced your own benefit accordingly for Life the fund will pay your spouse 50% of your
• 82:00 - 82:30 full entitlement the amount we would have paid had you not taken out your lumpsum so we would pay 50% of that amount which usually means 75% of what you were receiving at the time of your death because you took out your lumpsum so but generally speaking a spouse receives 50% of the full inte the the full pension um prior to commutation
• 82:30 - 83:00 into a lumpsum of part of the entitlement as a retiree and it is important that everyone understands that also survivors must submit the proof of life in the form of the certificate of entitlement from the time that they become entitled meaning from the year that they become entitled what can you do to facilitate the establishment of a future potential survivors benefit as I said already make
• 83:00 - 83:30 sure you submit you declare your spouse and your children of course to the fund in a timely manner before separation in your case that time has passed you are separated already now make sure that you provide us with all the relevant documentation if it's not yet in file divorce documents marriage documents and so on um then you can help help prefill form peny to you can help your spouse but don't date and sign the form yet
• 83:30 - 84:00 right but just take the form print it out and show your spouse you know where they put their name not the number well that even that is fine but um in ultimately that form shall not be submitted before you actually pass away and your surviving spouse is entitled to a benefit but if you think it's helpful you could go over the form with your spouse to make sure they understand what will be required in the
• 84:00 - 84:30 future at this time right now you can make sure that we have on file a copy of your marriage certificate your birth certificates for yourself and your spouse and um official ID documents of course they may not be valid anymore at the time that you actually pass away so maybe that's less useful but the marriage certificate and birth certificate for yourself and your spouse of course you could already submit if you wish to do
• 84:30 - 85:00 that I'm sorry and please also inform your spouse that they have to submit that annual certificate of entitlement form so that they don't risk the suspension of their benefit now talking about um oh I see there's a question about what if both the both spouses are entitled to survivors benefits from the U sorry both spouses are entitled to retirement benefits from the UN pension fund what
• 85:00 - 85:30 happens indeed that is actually not that unusual if two spouses are entitled they are married and they are entitled each to a retirement benefit from the pension fund then if one of the spouses dies the other one will receive a surviving spouse's benefit plus their own retirement benefit hold
• 85:30 - 86:00 on I'm really sorry so I repeat if there are two spouses entitled to a um benefit from the pension fund meaning a retirement benefit from the pension fund then if one spouse dies the other one is entitled to a surviving spouse's benefit plus their own retirement benefit I apologize I'm going to take a cough thing hopefully that
• 86:00 - 86:30 helps um okay I'm going to move on I know my colleagues are moderating the Q&A they will help respond to all of these questions what children so normally we pay a survivors benefit
• 86:30 - 87:00 to Children If the child is under age 21 at the time that the retire retiree passes away so as long as the child is under age 21 we would pay that surviving child's benefit until the end of the month during which the child turns 21 if however the child was recognized as disabled by the UN pension fund then we
• 87:00 - 87:30 will pay Beyond age 21 a surviving child's benefit and by the way way if there are several children entitled to survivors benefits um we pay of course each of the children a surviving child's benefit for as long as they are entitled and again normally until the end of the months during which a child turns 21 years of age um if a
• 87:30 - 88:00 child um excuse me is under the age of 16 we normally or we have to pay the child's benefit to a legal guardian if the other parent is still alive we will pay to that parent as the natural legal guardian but if there is not another parent that is um alive or someone else is a legal guardian for the child then we would need legal guardianship documents for the legal guardian to be
• 88:00 - 88:30 able to pay the child's benefit to that Leal Guardian I'm really sorry for this I hope this goes away slowly okay so make sure that if you have a disabled child that you have informed the fund of course and that is of course time sensitive and second if you have um if there's a need to arrange for legal gu guardianship maybe you already help with doing that so that following your desk there is a legal guardianship kind of system set up that
• 88:30 - 89:00 can take over if you have children that cannot be paid directly if a child is age 16 and over we can pay the child directly in which case it has to have its own bank account and by the way talking about bank account it is important that anyone who's entitled to a survivor's benefit has a bank account in their name if they receive the benefit directly so a spouse should have a bank account in their own name or if you have a joint account the account
• 89:00 - 89:30 must include The spouse's name so that they can receive the survivors benefit into that account and if a child is to be paid directly because they are 16 or older then that child must have a bank account in their name all right so I'm moving on um again there are some guidance on what you could do now to prepare specifically for disabled child um make sure that you set
• 89:30 - 90:00 up legal guardianship as early as possible um there is possibly a periodic review for the entitlement to a disabled child's benefit where we our medical service or rather our disability committee needs to receive a medical documentation for a disabled child every few years to ensure or confirm that the entitlement to a disabled child survivors benefit continues in time so these are just things to be aware of and
• 90:00 - 90:30 again if we pay a child directly we need to see receive a certificate of entitlement for that child um finally we have a legal guardianship document and we have of course a legal guardianship booklet I'm sorry and we have um the information about survivors that provides more detailed information about all of this if a child was not approved for disabled child's benefit by the fund then it is
• 90:30 - 91:00 usually not possible to pay such benefit I just want to highlight that because we have a few cases where we get re requests very very late years after separation and in that case it's very difficult of course to um award that kind of benefit all right now we are going into the certificate of entitlement there is a video about the certificate of entitlement which I would encourage those of you who are not familiar with this exercise to watch because it
• 91:00 - 91:30 contains important information what is this certificate of entitlement why do we bother you with that every year it is basically your proof of life that the fund must receive to ensure that you are still alive and we therefore have to continue paying your benefits it's to protect the fund's Financial Security if we had a lot of people who who pass away and no one informs us we may continue paying benefits um and not suspend them
• 91:30 - 92:00 and the benefits just continue in payment and we overpay and overpay and that of course will have an impact on the overall funding ratio of the fund so it is important that the fund verifies that we pay benefits to those who are entitled for as long as they are entitled so once you're in receipt of a regular monthly payment from the fund you will be part of those who have to submit this annual Proof of Life which we call the certificate of
• 92:00 - 92:30 entitlement if you don't submit it within the time frame required we will have to suspend the payment of your monly pension After we receive what we need an accept Proof of Life from you we will reinstate the benefit but it is of course painful for you to have your benefits stop and wait till we reinstate it therefore please make sure that every year you provide proof of life and you
• 92:30 - 93:00 at least in contact with the fund at least once a year normally the proof of life in the form of the certificate of entitlement must be submitted to the fund at the latest by 31 December each year you have different ways of submitting your proof of life you can either use the digital certificate of entitlement that you can issue inside the digital certificate of entitlement app where you just take a picture of
• 93:00 - 93:30 yourself a biometric picture and once that has been taken and issued you will have complied with this Proof of Life requirement and you need not do anything else or you can issue a paper CE meaning we issue the CE and you can use that paper based C form to date and hand sign it and then upload it back to the fund via your member Self Service document upload or you send it by mail back to
• 93:30 - 94:00 the fund again we must receive either your dce or your paper based C by 31 December every year if we don't receive it by that date then we will start what we call the pre-suspension process we identify all the cases for which we did not receive the certificate of entitlement and we then do an intensive followup helped by AIX associations and helped by former member
• 94:00 - 94:30 organizations and we also reach out directly to all those where we have an email address on file and where we didn't receive a certificate of entitlement or any form of proof of life and then we request to submit this document if we receive it with the next couple of months we will not suspend you but if someone does not submit any form of acceptable proof of of life to the fund by the end of May we will have to suspend that payment and every year out
• 94:30 - 95:00 of 80 plus thousand beneficiaries we suspend around a thousand who did not comply with the proof of Life requirement out of those thousand is around oneir probably passed away usually that's the ratio the other two thirds simply didn't remember to submit this certificate of entitlement um are maybe in a care home in the meantime or something or never received the certificate of entitlement um there
• 95:00 - 95:30 are various reasons they forgot to inform us of a change of address so we didn't uh we weren't able to send or they never received the CE again so my point here is number one it's good that you are aware of this annual requirement to that you do everything you can to submit the certificate entitlement in the form that you prefer either digital or paper based to the fund by 31 December and if for some
• 95:30 - 96:00 reason you can use neither the digital certificate of entitlement nor the paper based form at least contact us by email or by phone so that we know you are there in that case we can then work with you to ensure that we receive what we need to not suspend your benefit um the certificate of entitlement again you have time to
• 96:00 - 96:30 submit it the digital certificate of entitlement process can start on the 1st of January and you can submit it at any point between 1 January and 31 December the paper based CE we only publish in your member self service and we send it out to everyone by mail in member selfs service only those not on the two track we do that every year the paper based CE we issue every year by the end of June so it will reach you depending on where
• 96:30 - 97:00 you live somewhere between July possibly August and for those who have access to MSS member Self Service you can access it if you're not on the two track as of 1 of July usually so the digital certificate of entitlement period is open from 1 January till 31 December and any time in between you can issue that digital certificate you don't need to do it on the 1st of December you can do it at any point in that period And for
• 97:00 - 97:30 those who prefer to use the paper based form C form you can access it in MSS as of one July and then you have till year end to submit it to the fund in the way you prefer or you receive it by mail if you don't access member self service and that can take of course a little while from one July until it reaches you but again please submit it by 31 December
• 97:30 - 98:00 2024 if you retired at the end of December 2024 you will have to submit a dce only for 2025 and then you have the entirety of 25 to submit that [Music] dce now about the certificate of entitlement and um the mobile app there's more information following but
• 98:00 - 98:30 just to highlight that you have a choice no one is forced to use the digital certificate of entitlement and the mobile app no one we have the paper based system that continues we continue to mail out the paper CE to everyone who by June 2024 has not issued a digital C in other words don't worry about it if you don't want to use the dce app don't use it but why we insist so much on it
• 98:30 - 99:00 is because people who start using it usually actually like it and yes it takes a moment to set it up and register but once you have done that then it's fairly easy and there's no more mail no more paper you just simply use the DC app but if you want forget about the DC app don't feel forced to use it continue to use the paper based C form that's absolutely
• 99:00 - 99:30 fine um and yeah the bottom line is one Proof of Life per year is enough either the dce or the C form whichever you prefer this is the C form that's the document you Reed by mail and for those who are not on the two track that's the document that you will be able to access inside your member Self Service under
• 99:30 - 100:00 the document track do document tab as of 1 July 2024 and every year in July that's a document that you should date and hand sign and then submit to the fund if your signature has changed dramatically from the last time you submitted your then you need to have it authenticated according to the usual authentication requirements in the gray field that you
• 100:00 - 100:30 see underneath the signature and date but if your signature is consistent year after year and pretty much the same don't worry about signature authentication then we don't need it only if your signature has changed or if you can no longer sign but you need to use a Thum print that happens you know sometimes people because they have parking zone or something they tremble they can't sign well anymore no problem use a su print and in that case we do
• 100:30 - 101:00 need um the authentication of your sun print by a medical by a by by a doctor and a medical certificate to say unfortunately um pristine can no longer hand sign because she has Parkinson disease but she did fix her Sun print and I the doctor authenticate this here so this is just a repeat of what I already said um that's the other page of
• 101:00 - 101:30 the certificate of entitlement where you have barcodes and so on so it explains just what they are for and um this is what I just explained that if in case of a medical situation you cannot hand sign your CE as you did in the past but you some print it then you need to submit together with the CE uh Medical certificate from the same doctor that also authenticates your Su print more details provided on this page and
• 101:30 - 102:00 explained on our website if you didn't receive your C form and you can't access it in any way and you cannot use the the digital certificate of entitlement up then please send us a letter something with your handwritten signature and a date and of course your name and youque ID number in which you explain I did not receive my CE this is to confirm I'm alive here is my letter it's not as good
• 102:00 - 102:30 as a c why because it doesn't have a barcode and only the barcode can automatically update our systems to tell us that youve complied with the c requirement but because we do a manual review of as part of the pre supension we would see your letter and not suspend you if you send a letter in lure of a but ideally we always always want to receive your certificate of entitlement because that's the easiest way to update your records and ensure that you're not
• 102:30 - 103:00 getting suspended and what happens if for some reason you did get suspended because you didn't submit your CE contact us as soon as possible either we the contact us page or at the specific mailbox payment stopped and in that case we will need to receive from you proof of life so IDE deally provide that as part of the submission and we will reinstate you as soon as we can it usually takes a good three weeks from receipt of your
• 103:00 - 103:30 documents um the other option is as soon as possible enroll in the digital certificate of entitlement and issue your C there because that will help reinstate you even faster oh sorry there was a mention of after service health insurance indeed if we are not paying you there's no deduction for health insurance so you would have to pay that retroactively excuse me once we reinstate your
• 103:30 - 104:00 benefit and um another note is that if we don't receive a proof of life from you within two years from the date of suspension we will have to forfeit your entitlement finally as I mentioned if you're using the paper base C you can track whether the fund received it inside your MSS under the documents tab as indicated here um sorry not under the documents tab under the proof documents tab as indicated here where we tell you
• 104:00 - 104:30 whether we received and when we received your C form for a given year now for the digital certificate of entitlement the digital the dce there's there are some videos explaining what it is and how to register for the dce on our website link here um this is a link to the page on the dce and just to sum up what the digital
• 104:30 - 105:00 certificate of entitlement app is it's a mobile app that you can download on your device either your phone or your tablet it's optional no one needs to use it it's absolutely optional it can be used by anyone whether you on the two track or not everyone can use the digital certificate of entitlement up you would have to first register and once you have registered you will have an interaction with the
• 105:00 - 105:30 fund to confirm your identity they will allow you basically they authorize the use of the DC app for you from that point onward and then once that is the case every year year after year you can simply take a picture and you will thus have provided your proof of life to the fund if you submit your digital CE you don't need to submit a paper based CE form and the digital CE can be submitted at any point between 1 January and 31
• 105:30 - 106:00 December 20 of each year um the app exists in English French and Spanish so you have three languages in which you can use the app um once you enroll as part of the initial enrollment once you have downloaded this app on your either Android or iPhone you will have to go through a few steps to provide a phone number and
• 106:00 - 106:30 email address um your unique ID number and you have to upload a valid picture ID document that includes your signature government picture ID document once that is the case you submit this and then you will be contacted by the fund for an appointment to have a video call on the same device that you used to register they will verify your identity and once that is done you're good and
• 106:30 - 107:00 sorry I forgot one step as part of the initial setting up your digital C app you also take a picture so the steps of setting up the app is you provide phone number email address unique ID and of course your name and then upload a excuse me photo ID document and then you take a picture a biometric picture and then once that is done you move to the step of waiting to be contacted by the fund for an
• 107:00 - 107:30 appointment for verification of identity once you have had that call you're being authorized to use the app and as of then you can issue year after year the digital CE inside the app no need to reenroll at any point okay if you change your device in the future you may have to reset up the app on the new device and have a quick email exchange with the fund um just to confirm that but that's
• 107:30 - 108:00 it often we get questions is the biometric data save yes it's only stored on your phone it's not stored in any records of the fund or other and there is a lot of material on our website about the digital C so you can go there and um take your time read the FAQs read the stepbystep guides because really really they have been built over time and improved to help you with this process process of enrolling
• 108:00 - 108:30 and then issuing your annual CE as I mentioned we have now over 30,000 beneficiaries using this digital CE um year after year now we are looking quickly at what happens if you need to change your bank account or address so we're leaving behind the certificate of entitlement and proof of Life requirement and we look at what if you needed to change your address or Bank details so
• 108:30 - 109:00 we have a form called pf23 M to change address and a form called pf23 to change Banking instructions if you only want to change your address again remember if you are user of MSS and not on the two track you can actually change your address inside member Self Service under the address tab you don't need to use a form however if you are not a user of MSS or you are but you're on the twoot TRU then you need to use form PF 23m to inform
• 109:00 - 109:30 the fund of a change in address once we receive the form we will implement the change you can upload that form inside your member Self Service under document upload or you can send it to us by mail if you also need to change your Banking instructions then use form pf23 where you provide us with your new banking instruction or change currency whatever the case may be so this is what you can do make sure
• 109:30 - 110:00 you sign the document and you date it and you hand sign it of course um before uploading a scanned version inside member Self Service these are the forms in case you need to use the form keep in mind what form pf23 if you chck your bank details um even if you change bank account inside the same country we need to know
• 110:00 - 110:30 right every time one digit of your bank account changes or you change Banks the fund will need to know to make sure you get your money if it is required provide the sort of Swift codes and also if they change let the fund know because we may not be aware that a Swift Code change in which case it could imp impede the payment of your benefit and then once we receive your documents it takes um basically around 15 business days
• 110:30 - 111:00 between receipt of the document to implement the change now if that is somewhere in the payroll cycle then um it could take more than one payroll so what does this mean if we close a payroll around the nine or t of the months that means we're issuing that payment by the end of March of of the same month so 9 March would be paid at 31 March so payroll closes 9 March we
• 111:00 - 111:30 pay at the 31st March right so if we receive your document excuse me later than payroll closure there's nothing we can do except we cannot issue the payment if you if you tell us you can say don't issue the payment I give you new instructions and then I get retroactive payments in the future otherwise we pay into your old account and only with the next cycle into your new account so basically don't close an old account until you have
• 111:30 - 112:00 received your new your payment into the new account once we have implemented the change in payment instructions okay that's the best way to ensure you're not missing out on a payment now for cost of living excuse me cost of living adjustment un pension benefits you know this are adjusted every year sometimes even twice a year that's rare but it could happen so cost of living
• 112:00 - 112:30 adjustment or Cola happens um regularly it's based on our pension adjustment system we have regulations and rules around this and it happens for both people for both the payments under the dollar track or those who are on the two track or local track so basically for the details you would have to go to the pension adjustment system there's a lot of information about it but the system is that we will adjust based on the
• 112:30 - 113:00 movements of the Consumer Price Index normally of the United States for the US dollar track and if you are on the two track system then we are looking at the Consumer Price Index movements of your country of residence and we call that the local track and would then take that into account for adjustments I think very early on I showed you Austria and you saw it had a different adjustment than the United States so anyone on the
• 113:00 - 113:30 two track for Austria would have benefited from a different adjustment than those um on the US dollar track um who would have gotten the two TR the sorry the adjustment for the United States normally we adjust benefits once a year and that is provided that the Consumer Price Index relevant Consumer Price Index either for the US dollar track or the two track local track has moved by at least
• 113:30 - 114:00 2% excuse me since the date of the last adjustment if that is the case we will apply whatever adjustment has to be applied if it is not the case if the adjustment or if the movement has been less than 2% since the last adjustment then that CPI movement will be carried over and applied the following year and combined with whatever additional adjustment might have happened in the meantime normally these adjustments are
• 114:00 - 114:30 effective one April every year um in high inflation situations where a consumer price index has moved by 10% or more than the last from the last adjustment we would adjust again in October but you see it really requires a very very substantial um movement of the Consumer Price Index of 10% or more very
• 114:30 - 115:00 rare but if that is the case then yes we would do an adjustment in April and then again in October I already mentioned we had a 3.4 adjustment upward for the US dollar track payments which is over 80% of our payments are on the US dollar track and of course we also adjusted the low local track payments for those on the two track which are around 177% of our beneficiaries who receive payments under the two track
• 115:00 - 115:30 system um when that happens we issue cost of living adjustment letters and those Coler letters are posted in your member Self Service this is for the twoot track so if you're on the two track and there was an adjustment we will post this as a cola letter inside the document tab of your member self service I think that sometimes we also refer to these Cola letters as quarterly statements but it's the same thing basis
• 115:30 - 116:00 basically and finally again if you have member Self Service I would encourage you to check it regularly because these documents will be posted as I said under the documents Tab and it is important that you're aware of what is happening with your benefit because it explains also fluctuations positive or negative of course and finally the UN Pension Fund emergency
• 116:00 - 116:30 fund to understand um what this emergency fund is there is um a video emergency fund video and we have a booklet about the emergency fund I definitely suggest that if you are experiencing severe financial hardship and you want to make an application for a onetime payment from the UN pension fund as part of the emergency fund then please first read the booklet and watch
• 116:30 - 117:00 the video why because there are only very specific conditions under which the fund is allowed to make emergency fund payments we have a budget every year of around um I think right now it's $125,000 that we can pay as emergency fund pay payments however because of course it is money of the pension fund and therefore of its membership we cannot just give it out to anyone at any
• 117:00 - 117:30 time we have very specific conditions under something called note a of the funds regulations and rules where it is stipulated under what circumstances a fund the fund may make a payment from the emergency fund first of all emergency fund payments can only be made to someone in receipt of a regular monthly payment from the fund or to help with funeral cost for a
• 117:30 - 118:00 deceased retire or beneficiary it could also be used to help with funeral cast of to help a retiree with funeral costs of a spouse um so funeral Coast is one of the situations where we may be able to provide you with a fixed amount that is set every year for Aid with funeral cost number one number two we can help with medical
• 118:00 - 118:30 cost where these medical costs were not covered by your health insurance in that case we have to receive proof of what was paid by your health insurance and what was not paid to then determine what the fund can help with if you don't have medical insurance then also of course we may be able to help um but you have to provide um information that you're not covered by health insurance after service health insurance and we would be able to only pay a percentage towards
• 118:30 - 119:00 what you need to pay um another situation where we may be able to help is under um special emergency situations due to natural disasters for example if there's severe flooding earthquake um hurricanes if these have destroyed your home and you have experienced of course financial hardship because of such event then we may be able to provide you with a one-time payment and usually that
• 119:00 - 119:30 payment is a fixed amount I think currently it's around $500 and that's it so we are not talking about huge amounts that the fund can help with but for funeral costs help with medical expenses and um under special natural disaster emergency situations we can help with a little bit emergency fund payments are one-time payments they are not repeat payments so
• 119:30 - 120:00 that's important to remember they are not meant to substitute pension so if you say I don't receive every month I don't receive enough money give me a bit more every month that's not possible there the emergency fund is also not intended to help with educational costs for children to help to I don't know refurnish a home all of that is not possible so it's really very specific and I would really invite anyone potentially interested in making an application to check the booklet and
• 120:00 - 120:30 make sure that you're aware of the conditions if you do want to make a submission a request for emergency fund assistance then please provide that request together with proof of payment made for fin for funeral cost and for medical expenses and then based on proof of payment made the fund will assess whether you qualify for emergency fund assistance we have a certain formula that we use to see based on length of
• 120:30 - 121:00 contributory service benefit amount that someone is entitled to age well age actually no longer but also what kind of benefit you're entitled to so we look at all these factors to determine whether or not we can make an emergency fund payment we would love to pay everyone but we have a limited amount and we have over 86 th000 members in receipt of periodic benefits so we have to manage that money carefully all right but absolutely if
• 121:00 - 121:30 you think you qualify please reach out so that we can assess your case and let you know if you qualify if we need additional information and finally of course if we can make a payment what the amount will be I just want to highlight it's never huge amounts um there's also by the way an emergency fund request tab in your member s service that you could also use but in that case you still need to submit hard copy documents to the fund
• 121:30 - 122:00 or upload them in me member sta service to make to provide proof of payment made and this element of proof of payment made is really important for funeral cost and medical um expenses we don't make advanced payments we assess what you had to pay and whether we can help you with a little bit towards such payment for the special emergency fund assistance in the context of natural disaster it's a bit different there if
• 122:00 - 122:30 someone qualifies we make a one-time payment and finally because we have received requests in the recent past for whether we can help with financial assistance from the emergency fund in the context of conflict and War we cannot those are not covered under our provisions and I think if they were we would probably exhaust our funds very very quickly sadly but we cannot help from the emergency
• 122:30 - 123:00 fund in those circumstances that's the view in members s service if you wanted to make a submission and before we close how can you contact the UN pension fund I showed that to you at the very beginning I just want to highlight it one more time time so that you know there is a contact us tab on our web page please use it to contact us but also to see the different
• 123:00 - 123:30 kinds of contact channels we have and that you should please use to send a message please use this form on the contact us page as I explained earlier and if you need to call us then you have the numbers provided either for New York or Geneva it's just by time zone uh or toll-free numbers again the contact center functions 24 hours a day so we cover 24
• 123:30 - 124:00 hours a day regardless which number you call New York Geneva or a toll-free number Monday to Friday you will normally reach someone because we cover 24 hours and of course as I already mentioned you can always visit us I know unfortunately we are only in New York and Geneva for walking Services we have very very small liazon offices in Bangkok and Nairobi with two people in each office and they are mostly in
• 124:00 - 124:30 charge of doing Outreach in the region um but they do offer um to meet with people so if you want you can locally reach out if you are in Bangkok or Nairobi then please see if you can reach out and I'm sure you can to connect with them and they could probably meet with you in person if you would like to but regular walk-in services are possible only in New York and Geneva as I said Tuesdays and Thursdays and
• 124:30 - 125:00 finally I did highlight already but I think it's just important to remind you for payment stopped or reporting the death of a retiree or beneficiary we have the Urgent assistant page with specific mailboxes where you can write directly info available in six languages so that those who don't speak English or French um fluently or at all could also understand what is required so these are specific mail address it where you could directly
• 125:00 - 125:30 address your queries instead of using the contact form generally it's always best to use the contact form and honestly it's the same because we give priority to these items regardless of whether you write directly to the mailbox or you use the contact form but if you need to request your unique ID number or need help with member selfservice support write to these respective mailbox addresses or use the
• 125:30 - 126:00 contact form Our member self-service support team will respond within one day if you need to reach out because of a sto payment or to report the death of a pension fund member then you have these two SEC third and fourth mailboxes and please use those again they are handled as as priority but I will say that that requires more in-depth review and Analysis of a case so it takes a little bit longer to respond to this yet
• 126:00 - 126:30 we do Endeavor to reply within maximum five days or faster um and that is it so before I close first I would like to thank you for all your attention I hope we covered aspects of retirement and receiving benefits that are relevant to you and that were helpful I'm sure there are some that should or that you would have liked to hear about and that weren't in here I will include in the
• 126:30 - 127:00 presentation that I post on the website information about retirees who return to active service I'm not covering this here because it is actually quite long to cover and within 2 hours and 15 minutes it would have been very hard I know we announced that we would cover this here but I'm going to include the pages the slides let's say about um retirees who return to active service after retirement and again work for a un
• 127:00 - 127:30 pension F member organization so that you have the information the recording and the slid will be posted on our website under the um pension Town Hall session page just one moment sorry let me just remind you under this under resources let me go to the homepage so if you go up here menu under resources pension Town Hall sessions
• 127:30 - 128:00 this is where we are going to post the event of today 22 May and you will see the link to the recording and to the PowerPoint which will include additional slides about employment after retirement um that will be posted here within the next two days I hope I would say by the end of this week um and then of course you have information about future
• 128:00 - 128:30 sessions namely the F French session of this topic in on 12th June and then thereafter we will have other sessions um that start again in July or that start that continue in July um that you will post see posted here um finally I don't know whether the survey was already posted but if not I would invite milco to please post the survey link um so that you could please those of you who are willing to do that
• 128:30 - 129:00 take a very brief survey to give us feedback on this session so that we know whether it was useful and if we should make adjustments changes um whatever it is that you would like to suggest these sessions are built for you and our aim is to make it as useful as possible to as many of you as possible I so your feedback is truly valued and if you take the time it takes about 2 minutes or 3 minutes to complete the survey I would
• 129:00 - 129:30 be very grateful so again I don't know if M if you already posted it maybe you can post it one more time um thank you for those who are willing to take the survey so with this big thank you to everyone for attending and a huge thank you to my colleagues who moderated over 120 questions I hope got the answers you needed I know it's never enough but at least I hope it was useful in what we covered today um and big thanks to our
• 129:30 - 130:00 organizers also the IT team Alexandro and Marino and of course to um you all for being here finally I wish you all good health and a very long and hopefully happy retirement and also to our beneficiaries all the very best to everyone I hope it was a good session thank you