GSIS grants 50.7% more benefits to members

State-owned Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) has granted P80 billion worth of loans and claims to its members from January to September this year, a 50.7-percent increase from a year ago.

Compared to the same period last year, GSIS only disbursed P53.1 billion in loans and claims.

“As the fund grows, so does the amount of benefits we provide to our members and pensioners,” said GSIS president and general manager Winston Garcia.

Of the total loans and claims granted for the first nine months of the year, P53.6 billion were attributed to loans while P26.4 billion came from claims.

The growth in loans granted was particularly remarkable, reflecting a 111.9-percent increase from P25.3 billion granted in the same period last year.

Bulk of the loans granted came from Consolidated Loan (Conso-Loan), which accounted for P37.7 billion of the total amount.

The Conso-Loan is a loan window that consolidates five different loan packages into one — Salary Loan, Restructured Salary Loan, Enhanced Salary Loan, Emergency Loan Assistance and Summer One-Month Salary Loan — thus, making it easier to manage.

The P10,000-Cash Advance Plus loan, another loan product that can be availed of one-time using the G-W@PS, chipped in P6.3 billion to the total amount of loans granted.

Earlier, the GSIS reported that its net operating revenues during the same period reached P35 billion, a 20-percent improvement from P29.2 billion in the same period last year.

The GSIS attributed the strong earnings growth to the increase in its revenues from its local investments.

The pension fund posted a 29.7-percent growth in its revenues from other investments to P15.3 billion from P11.8 billion.

Parts of these were attributed to the revenues of P153.4 million earned from domestic investments managed by local fund managers.

The GSIS has earlier tapped Metropolitan Bank and Trust Co., Bank of the Philippine Islands and Banco De Oro Universal Bank to manage P6 billion in net investible funds for a period of three years starting this year.

The three banks were assigned as the local fund managers of the GSIS with a mandate of P2 billion each.