FNPF Urges Employers To File Contribution Schedule With Payments

Employers who continue to deposit their employees’ FNPF contributions directly into the Fund’s bank accounts without submitting the Contribution Schedule (CS) forms are liable to be fined up to $5000 as stipulated under the law, which will come into effect on 1 January, 2017.

This stern warning was issued yesterday by the Chief Operating Officer, Mr Jaoji Koroi, who also revealed that a total of $3million deposited by employers into the Fund’s bank accounts were not accompanied with any CS forms.

“This literally means that $3million of members’ funds have not been distributed to members’ accounts because the Fund does not have CS forms that contains the details of the owners of these funds and how much should be distributed to each of them,” Mr Koroi said.

“Despite several reminders, employers continue to deposit employees’ contribution directly to FNPF bank accounts without completing the required CS forms which must be first verified by the Fund before any deposits are made.”

Mr Koroi said these forms contain key information such as FNPF numbers, members’ names and their respective contribution amounts which was vital in order to accurately and timely post to member’s individual accounts.

“For the ease of employers, the Fund developed the employers Online Portal as a tool to submit the CS forms and allow employers to generate their own invoice numbers once they are able to successfully load it.

The process is such that when employers are submitting online, they are notified via email the status of their CS forms. The Employer will have to generate their Invoice from the Portal before remitting their funds directly into the FNPF bank account.

Employers who are continue to face difficulties in submitting the CS online or in generating invoices are urgently requested to contact us.

“Without the completed CS forms, the funds remitted will remain undistributed and their employees who are members of the Fund will lose out on their benefits such as daily interest credited into their account or entitlements for early withdrawals.

“This is why we are strongly urging employers to submit Contribution Schedule forms early in the month and make the required payments at month end as per the FNPF Decree,” Mr Koroi said.

The required use of the portal is also a result of the changes in the interest formula-daily averaging.

In addition, Mr Koroi requests Employers who utilize internet banking, to ensure that the banking narration clearly outlines the Employer’s Reference Number/Invoice number to allow for timely issuance of receipts.

“Banking of other bank cheques into the FNPF account must be done five (5) working days before month end to enable processing between banks and allow for receipts to be issued accordingly.”

“The focus at the moment is small to medium businesses to use the portal to avoid the long queue at FNPF counters. Eventually, all Employers will be required to align the payments of their FNPF contributions for their employees’ in the same manner, if they have not yet done so already,” the Chief Operating Officer said.

Employers are encouraged to the contact the Fund should they wish to undergo training on the online portal.