People's Blog for PeopleSoft

Benefits in Singapore January 2, 2010

Neil, I am finally here. This is my first post. I think in 2009 you cursed me enough. I made you change the appearance and name too. But never posted anything till today. But finally I am posting. My long lost wish.

Now I am your partner.

The easiest thing I can write at this time is the project I am working now. We are implementing benefit system for one of our customer in Singapore. Now if you have worked in past with North American customers then need to remember that systems here is far more simplified. But for developer it becomes more difficult as we are actually developing a bolt-on. We found PeopleSoft’s Base Benefits and Ben Admin systems far complicated then the need of the customer.

Like employers around the world companies here in Singapore provide similar benefits related to medical & dental insurance, reimbursement of health screening, hospitalization & surgical expenses. There are also other benefits like leave and vacation which are managed in PeopleSoft’s Absence system. Traditionally and in NA we used to calculated leave and vacation entitlement in Benefit system as rules were highly simple. Here rules are not very complicated but types of leaves are too many to manager in Benefit system. Hence Absence Management is used. It provided great rules processing and delivered integration with Global Payroll system.

Back to benefits. Much of what I am going write here is about my client, because this is my first and only project related Benefits in this region. We have primarily Medical, Dental, Health Screening, Hospitalization and Surgical, and Travel Insurance benefits. Apart from there are many allowances and fringe benefits but they are outside the scope as they are managed in Payroll system.

Medical benefits include cashless service at panel clinics, doctors, polyclinics (govt hospitals) and private hospitals. It can be reimbursement if patient visit doctor or clinic not on panel of the employer or insurance company. This benefit is applicable to General Practitioner or Specialist. Specialist claims are subject to letter from GP. All the reimbursements are subject to 10% co-payment by employees. The monetary value of the provided benefit is not very exciting and it has too many rules on policy document. Fortunately customer did not expect us to implement all of them. But that is Asia. Lack of trust.

Dental claims are subject to reimbursement of S$ 150 to S$ 250. Very simple. Not much of the rules.

Health Screening reimbursements are provided to employees over the age of 40. Till 45 you get 1 health check paid by company in two years. After 45 you get same benefit every year. This is primarily for management and staff above that grade/band.

Travel Insurance is for all staff members who travel for company business. They are eligible to standard travel insurance that is fully outsourced.

Hospitalization and Surgical claims can be made by all employees based up on their eligibility. Eligibility varies in the form for total amount, type of hospitals, beds and services selected.

Unlike NA, here employee do not contribute any amount towards premium for medical and dental insurance.

This was in nutshell. There are different kind of eligibility rules and automatic processing which we have developed. Consider this as initial draft and starting point. Buzz if you have any questions. That will make this post more interesting and complete.

Thank you Neil for making me a partner. And this post good or bad is dedicated to you. Consider this as new year gift.