Monthly Pension after you superannuate, having served Indian Government is a privilege that not everyone in India enjoys. However, there is a need to present yourself around November of a year to mark the fact that you are alive so that you can get your pension into your bank account for the next 12 months. This is a process a lot of seniors follow year after year.
My father is one of them. In early days, until a couple of years ago, it required a physical visit to the bank where you had the pension account, Like most of them in India, my father has it with State Bank of India (SBI). So his annual visit to the bank required that he fill up some form, sign it and stand in the queue, when his turn came, he would be called into the managers cabin and the manager would then sign the form after taking a careful look at my father and checking his signature which he had access to because he had the bank account with SBI. The form would then be shipped to a central office and some humans in the process chain would mark their systems to enable processing of pension for the next 12 months. The process was so smooth (though it took a couple of week for the process to complete after you presented yourself to the manager) that there was rarely a mistake and in all the years he has had no issues receiving his pension. Not once since 1994! This speaks of the quality of the process, though today most of us have complaints about almost all financial institutions.
There was only one problem. What if you were not in the same city as your bank was. But this was a known problem and most pensioners would make sure to be at home during Nov! Slowly, the banks became digital, which meant that you could visit any SBI bank branch in any city physically during Nov, fill the in the details and mark your presence. That was a slight improvement in having to visit your branch physically to any branch physically. This was a significant improvement because then you did not have to worry if you were physically located in the place where you held you bank account. The process still took a couple of weeks to complete after you presented yourself to the manager.
Things remained like this for a while. Aadhaar (Unique Identification Authority of India) was introduced in India which became a talk of everything in India. Most of them linked this to their bank account and pensioners were asked to do so to ease their pension disbursement. Most of them, like my father, did it without any concern. The coming of Aadhaar made it more easy to mark your presence in November. Now you could sit in the house and download an application and buy a finger print scanner and in November, literally anywhere in the world you could mark your presence, except that you required to have a mobile phone to receive an OTP and a fingerprint scanner to scan you thumb to mark your presence. While there was ease in the process, not many were able to use it because owning a fingerprint scanner for "once in a year exercise" was not worth the effort of owning one, leave alone using it. So most, like my father, still went to a SBI branch, and the bank would use the Aadhar platform to digitally acknowledge the presence of the pensioner. The good thing about the process was that the weeks between presenting yourself and generation of life certificate processing was almost instantaneous! This again was a remarkable move for the pensioners, because they did not have to worry if the paper submitted by them was safely moved in the process chain.
The need to go to a bank, though anyone anywhere, still meant that there was a long queue and this was not something seniors were comfortable with, so came in the wide networked postal department. They were equipped with a mobile application which the postman carried and visited a senior (on request for a small fee) and moved the process that was happening in the bank to the comfort of the home. That was a significant move for seniors. However the postmen most of them not so digital savvy found it hard to complete the process especially considering the fact that the finger print scanner did not seem to capture the senior's finger print very well because of age, there were several failed to authenticate flags by Aadhar server. But it was definitely a good move, especially for seniors who could not afford to go to the bank and stand in the queue. And like earlier the life certificate was issues almost instantaneously.
This year (2021) the marking of presence of a pensioner went to a different level. Welcome VideoLC (Video Life Certificate) introduced by SBI.You just logged in giving your SBI bank account number, which would in turn trigger an OTP from Aadhar (remember Aadhar is linked to the bank account!) which allowed you to login. Once logged in, you had the choice of video chatting with the manager in SBI! If s/he was not available you could book a time slot convenient to you and you could video chat with the SBI manager to mark your presence.
If you choose a slot (like I did for my father), you login to VideoLC during the selected time slot and you are in the digital queue (in the comfort of your house) and when your turn comes up you are video chatting with a SBI manager with your front camera on. After a brief salutations, the manager asks for the 4 digit code that appears on your video chat, once you spell it the camera switches to the back camera and the manager asks for the original PAN to be shown to the camera, he captures that and then the front camera come on and he captures the image of the pensioner; and lo the process of marking your presence is complete!
Having helped my father get his life certificate for quite sometime now, I find the progress in the way pensioners mark their presence go from "have to visit your branch" to "freely from anywhere". I think this is a good move by SBI to make things convenient for pensioners especially the super seniors who find it hard to go to a bank; and even if they went it would be a nightmare to social distance in a small bank branch or have a postman come to your home in the pandemic situation caused by COVID.
Approximate time line.
- 1994-2004 - Visit SBI branch where you had your pension account
- 2005-2015 - Visit any branch
- 2015-2019 - Visit any branch (Aadhar based)
- 2020 - Post Office Service
- 2021 - VideoLC (Video Life Certificate)
{Please leave a message if you want more information on how we used the Video LC from SBI}
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