How Bantay ABE works

These are the rules the program’s staff follow. The amounts and periods below are always the current ones.

1. Membership

• Membership is open to Agricultural and Biosystems Engineers (ABEs). You register with your PRC license number.
• To make sure only licensed engineers join, you upload a photo of your PRC ID and a selfie holding it. A coordinator or admin checks them against PRC’s online verification. Your membership starts only once you are verified and your first top-up is confirmed.
• You can list your spouse and up to 4 children (5 beneficiaries in all) — the people who receive your death assistance. For each one we keep a date of birth, address and, if they have them, a cellphone number and email. A date of birth is locked once saved. You and your listed beneficiaries can claim the same assistance, except the pabaon, which is for the member only.
• Members can endorse the engineers they recruit. When the person they endorsed becomes an active member, the endorsing member receives a small bonus in their balance.
• Membership continues after the main ABE member’s death. The family stays in the program and can keep receiving assistance, for as long as the account’s balance is kept at zero or more. The family can ask a program admin to help them take over the account.
• To become a member you make a first top-up of —. Your membership becomes active once it is confirmed.
• A flat fee of — is taken from every top-up and shared between your city or municipal chapter, your province chapter, your region, the national office and the platform fee. The rest is credited to your balance, so a ₱100 top-up credits ₱85.
• There are no flat monthly dues. When the need arises and a claim is paid, its total amount is divided equally between all members, and each member’s part is taken from their balance. Members top up whenever their balance runs low.

Safety nets: when a balance goes negative

• Your balance is what has been credited from your top-ups (after the fee), minus your share of every claim that has been paid. It is shown on your member dashboard, with the history of your shares.
• If it is negative, from −₱1 down to −₱50, your waiting period stops running until you top up again.
• While it is negative and something happens, you are not eligible and none of your beneficiaries can receive assistance.
• If it goes beyond −₱50, the same applies, and after you settle everything you owe you must wait another 3 months before you can receive any assistance again.
• You must settle all payables before help resumes.

2. Contributions

• Pay by GCash, bank transfer or cash. For GCash or bank transfer, submit the reference number and, ideally, a screenshot of the receipt. For cash, hand it to a program treasurer, who confirms it in the system.
• A treasurer matches your payment against the program’s records. Once confirmed, your balance goes up and you receive a numbered acknowledgement receipt. The smallest top-up is —.
• A reference number can only be used once.

3. What members receive

• Death assistance is paid to the member’s beneficiaries, shared equally. When a listed beneficiary is the person who passed away, the assistance is paid to the member.
• Hospitalization assistance needs a confinement of at least 2 days, shown on the hospital certificate. It is paid to the member, or to the beneficiaries if the member is the one hospitalized.
• The pabaon is a retirement send-off, paid once, to the member. It is paid at age 65. A member who became active at 65 or older must also have been active for 3 years. Its amount is calculated: — (the per-member amount times the number of active members).
• Each kind of assistance has a waiting period, counted from the day your membership became active, not counting any days your balance was negative. Claims filed before it ends are not accepted.
• Assistance is paid from the pooled fund, which is built from members’ top-ups (after the flat fee). When a claim is paid, its amount is divided equally between all members and charged to their balances.
• For transparency, each month we publish what that month’s claims cost each member (total claims ÷ members), which is the amount charged to every balance.

4. How a claim is handled

1. File — the member, or a coordinator or admin on the family’s behalf, files the claim and attaches the required documents: a death certificate for a death claim; the hospital bill, clear pictures and a hospital certificate for hospitalization. A member’s own death claim is always filed on the family’s behalf.
2. Endorse — the member’s chapter president or city/municipal ABE attests that the member and the claim are genuine.
3. Review — an approver checks the documents, the claimant’s identity, the membership status and the waiting period, then approves or declines. The approver must confirm, in the system, that they checked the identity. A decline always comes with a reason.
4. Release — a treasurer releases the payment. When more than one person could do a step, nobody can both approve and release the same claim.
5. Record — the payment is added to the public record, without names.

Claims are only paid while the fund has enough.

5. Transparency

• The fund balance, total contributions, total assistance and recent assistance are shown on the public page.
• Every approval, payment and rule change is recorded in an audit log that program staff can review.
• A member’s ID card carries a code anyone can check at the verification page. It shows only a first name, last initial and whether the member is active.

6. Good to know

• Bantay ABE: Tulong Bayaw Network is a member-funded dayong: members share the cost when one of them, or their family, is hit by a death or a hospitalization. It is not an insurance product, not an investment and pays no returns, and it is not an official service of the Department of Agriculture.
• The Kauban platform only provides the tools for the records and the accounting. It does not invest or lend the fund and does not decide who is helped.
• Questions or concerns: ask a program admin.
• How we handle your information is explained in the Privacy Notice.