NEW MEASURES ISSUED FOR THE BENEFIT OF PENSIONERS, TO MITIGATE RISKS OF CORONAVIRUS INFECTION

Actions implemented by pensions funds during Covid-19

Since 19 March 2020 and, as a result of the declaration of State of Emergency and the mandatory preventive isolation for citizens over 70 years, declared by the President Ivan Duque, pension funds have announced new measures to be implemented in order to continue guaranteeing the payments of pension allowances to those pensioners who collect them over the counter.

The main purpose of these measures is to protect the health and integrity of senior citizens. Likewise, it seeks to avoid movement, overcrowding of people in public places, promote self-care and contain the spread of the coronavirus.

Colombian Pension Administrator - Colpensiones has announced that they will continue with the payments for their pensioners as usual. For people over 70 years old, who charge their allowances at the counter, they will be assigned a free bank account, so they can withdraw the money through physical ATMs. The only requirement for this is to contact the Welfare Line 018000 42 5555 to update their personal information, so the bank can deliver a physical or virtual way to collect their pension allowance.

For the rest of the pensioners, under 70 years old, Colpensiones has provided that the payment of their pension allowances will be made in the usual way; however, it calls for responsible compliance with the protection and prevention measures implemented by the financial institutions.

In the same way, the private pension funds administrators have reported that, among their measures to protect their pensioners, they will create bank accounts for those who are not are unbanked, in order to make pay their allowance consignment and thus avoid displacement to their offices. Similarly, for those who do not want to be banked, the AFPs are developing alliances with banking institutions, to transfer the payment of the pension allowance in cash directly to the pensioner’s home, by a valuables transport.

In accordance with the communiques published by the different entities, priority will be given, for the implementation of these measures, to cities that have reported the greatest risk of contagion, such as Bogotá and surrounding cities, Cali, Cartagena, Cucuta, Medellin and the metropolitan area, Neiva and Palmira.

Accreditation of faith life of citizens abroad

Due to the public health and social emergency of global nature, which has unleashed the Coronavirus, the Ministry of Labor on March 27 2020, issued Decree 488 of 2020, which within the extraordinary measures that were established, it found in Article 8° to suspend, for a term of six (6) months, accreditation of faith life that should be submitted by nationals outside the country, before the entities that make up the Social Security System General Integral, while the facts that gave rise to the Economic, Social and Ecological Emergency persist.

We recall that, in accordance with Decree Law 019 of 2012, as amended by Article 36 of Decree Law 2106 of 2019, nationals outside the country had to prove their faith life (survival) before the entities of the Social Security System every six (6) months, either by presentation to the consulate where the person is living or document issued by a public authority of the city where the person resides.

With this temporary measure, the State seeks to benefit and at the same time protect Colombians living abroad, so that they do not have to travel to consulates, especially pensioners who had to make these transfers in order to obtain their accreditation.