NATSAVE, NHIMA ink digital deal
NATSAVE Bank has joined the National Health Insurance Management Scheme Authority (NHIMA) digital platform which will enable the financial institution provide an efficient contributions collection and management solutions for channel payments.
This collaboration will leverage on NATSAVE’s online solutions and infrastructure to deliver effective service to contributors of NHIMA.
Under this partnership signed in Lusaka yesterday, both NATSAVE and NHIMA would be able to grow their clientele as it will provide one stop shop services.
NATSAVE’s role will be to provide an efficient contributions collection and management solution capable of providing single - channel payments.
This will be done using digital to remit contributions and provide employers with a direct interface with the NHIMA payment portal, to permit the online payment of contributions, according to NATSAVE Chief Executive Officer Malcom Chabala during the signing ceremony of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).
Mr Chabala explained that these contributions would then be remitted to the relevant NHIMA collections account.
“We will provide employers and individual members with payment channels to remit contributions and transfer all funds collected in the transit/virtual accounts to the NHIMA main collection account using the Real Time Gross Settlement System RTGS,” he said.
Mr Chabala mentioned that the similarity of the vision and intent made NATSAVE and NHIMA perfect partners in ensure every citizen and established residents of Zambia could contribute to a health insurance scheme and access health services from defined facilities across the country.
NHIMA Director General James Kapesa said the authority had progressive conversations with the financial services industry. He said the partnership with NATSAVE would enable the current 1,830,000 principal NHIMA members make contribution payments and check their membership status.
Mr Kapesa stated that the commercial banking sector was not a new partner as they had been helping NHIMA grow its fund investment portfolio.
He said this in a speech read for him by the NHIMA Director Finance David Kongwa.
“We continue to foster a strong relationship and work collaboratively with our banks to drive Government’s development agenda.
“I am delighted that NATSAVE has partnered with NHIMA to make the pooling of funds more manageable and convenient through their digital payment platform,” Mr Kapesa said.