As per the message received by email today from the Fund and the message on the website (link below) inviting Fund beneficiaries to enroll in the digital CE (certificate of entitlement) system, I'm all for modernizing systems, but I have questions:
How much does it cost? While it's optional now, will it eventually become mandatory? Do we have to jump through the digital hoops annually? Who does this new system benefit and how, when many beneficiaries are not able to make use of it? What are the downsides, if any? Will we have a full and transparent accounting anytime soon?
In addition, in order to enroll in the system, Fund beneficiaries must download an app on our mobile device, make a video call through the app at the appointed time, and verify our biometric identity.
What about the many Fund beneficiaries (in AFICS/NY, fully 20 per cent) who do not use email and may not have electronic devices? If that's just New York, what about the numbers in other parts of the world?
And at the heart of my skepticism about this new development are serious questions of trust in the people managing and overseeing our Fund:
Why should we trust people (the Fund administration) who, as only one recent example, continue to claim astronomical compliance rates in benefit processing against the 15 business day benchmark? How? It turns out that they achieved this by stopping and starting the clock when documents are missing! What happened to basic transparency and integrity, not to mention common sense?
