John Jonas breaks down SSS benefits for Filipino freelancers: a national ID, maternity pay of about 2.5 months' salary, disability and retirement pensions, a funeral benefit around PHP20,000, and low-interest loans up to roughly one month's salary. Signup details are available through onlinejobs.ph.
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Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at working with OFS online Filipino specialists. This is episode 201. What can your OFS get with SSS? So I've talked about SSS quite a few times recently because people keep asking. Every time I talk about it I get more questions and then I realize I didn't cover it all. So today I want to talk about what they can get with sss. Now just again, to reiterate, paying SSS for them is completely optional. It's a really good option though, if you have the means. So just to reiterate what I've talked about in the past about it. So when your OFS signs up for sss, they are going to get a universal multi purpose id umid, which is like a really, really good ID to have in the Philippines. So in the US we really have two identifications. We have a driver's license and a passport. I guess you could also consider a birth certificate or a Social Security card id, but those are default, right? So in the Philippines they have multiples, they have a driver's license, they have a passport, they also have this um, id and they have another ID from a different agency that exists. So there's, there's quite a few IDs that they can get. And they consider this SSS ID as one of the best IDs they can get because it's accepted all over the place. It'll help them set up a bank account. It'll help them apply for a credit card or for a bank loan. It'll help them get verification with PayPal or Payoneer. Or it'll help them get a driver's license or a passport. So an SSS ID is a really good ID to have. It makes a lot of things easier. And then when they start making their contributions, here are the things that SSS can provide for them. So number one, sickness benefit. So it's like a daily cash allowance for every day when they are sick, when they're not able to work. Next, maternity benefit. So this is when they have a baby, the SSS will pay them two and a half months salary and that the amount is based off of how much they've been paying into sss. Disability benefit. So this is, it's a cash benefit. They can get either in like a monthly amount or a lump sum if they are permanently or long term disabled. Then there's the retirement pension, which is either a pension that's paid monthly or they can get a lump sum from it. And after they retire next, the SSS continues. So a death benefit. So the beneficiaries of your SSS account can get the death benefit to help with your funeral costs after you're dead. So the SSS actually continues after retirement and there's a death benefit and a funeral benefit. So the death benefit your beneficiaries can get from get out of your SSS either a monthly amount or a lump sum based off of what you've paid into it. Then there's the funeral benefit which is, it's like a cash amount of like 20,000 Filipino pesos to help pay for death expenses. Then last, and this is kind of an not super relevant benefit, there's an unemployment benefit. So people in the Philippines, they can become unemployed. They can get this unemployment payment for your people. They can't get that because they're not employed. So they can't be unemployed. They're independent contractors. They can go without having work, but they're not, they can't, they're not going to get the independent contractor or they're not going to get the, they're not going to get the unemployment benefit. Okay, so the last thing I want to talk about with SSS is loans. So being an SSS member gives your OFS the ability to take out a loan from the sss. And these are typically, they call it a salary loan. It's a low interest loan that's based on the amount that you're able to get is based on the amount that you make. And the first time you take out a loan you're able to take out the equivalent of one month's salary. The second time you take out a loan you can take out two months salary and so on. These typically have to be paid back within the year. And so they are a short term, the amount based on the amount that you make. And it's a short loan that is intended to, typically they use it to build credit. So we have a guide for your OFS on how they can sign up for sss. It's available to them in their onlinejobs PH account. All the information they need to get to sign up for this is, it's not, it's not that difficult. And it all becomes available to them when they go to the SSS website and get into their SSS portal, everything becomes available. It's pretty, it's pretty simple for them.
