Newly Appointed Ceo Shares Vision for Social Security Board

In October, Jerome Palma officially took the reins as CEO of the Social Security Board, after serving as Deputy CEO for a year. The board says Palma is stepping in to lead the charge on financial sustainability and operational efficiency, two big priorities for the organization. He’s replacing Dr. Leroy Almendarez, who had a short stint in the role. So, what’s Palma’s vision for the future? Today, he sat down with the media to share his plans and address some of the concerns that have been swirling around. Here’s what he had to say.

 

Jerome Palma, C.E.O., Social Security Board

“I think my first plan is an alignment with our strategic priorities. We have had identified four strategic priority areas, so there’s definitely an alignment there. For me it is to ensure that we push in that way to deliver on those. We have established those as our priorities. We have advised everyone that those are priority areas. From where I sit as CEO, I have the function of operationalizing it to being sure from an administration and a management perspective, we can push forward with those priority areas. So from a vision, it is definitely an alignment with those because those are established now. Those are areas that we are looking at and we want to make sure we can achieve those. It is also for us to push to a point where we can recognize the changes that the Belize and public expect from Social Security.” 

 

Reporter

“In the most layman terms for them, how does this look for for them in terms of future or not so distant, but of course, When it comes to benefits, death benefits because they’re like, okay, I paid social security. I expect this from them.”

 

Jerome Palma

“I think we can’t look at the benefit in a strict sense of, say, a funeral grant. That is one of our benefit. There are survivors pension that is also paid with respect to death. So that is an additional benefit that we pay out for us. We have to be mindful that any increase in benefit. May have a countering effect where there may need to be an adjustment and perhaps an increase in rate or a restructuring of what we have. So it is not as straightforward as saying, okay, the usual cost is two thousand. Let us make that adjustment there. It may be to meet that now, what would be the relative adjustment we have to meet elsewhere.”