The Quality of Service of Philippine Retirement Authority: A Servqual Approach

Abstract

Tourism is everyone’s business. The government recognizes the said industry as an important contributor to foreign exchange earnings, investments, revenue, employment, and growth. The Philippine Retirement Authority (PRA) is an attached agency of the Department of Tourism. The government strongly encouraged that the Philippines be developed and promoted as a retirement haven to accelerate the social and economic development of the country, strengthen its foreign exchange position and attract foreign investments. The leverage of the US dollar against the Philippine peso enables the country to be competitive in offering an attractive package to targeted retirees, such as foreign nationals and former Filipinos, who are looking forward to a comfortable lifestyle as they reach retirement age by way of getting the best value of their money and investment opportunities in their retirement years. The PRA’s Special Resident Retiree’s Visa retiree-members reciprocate the service quality level they receive from the said organization. It is important to conduct any PRA-related study because of its significant economic contributions.

The study utilized a SERVQUAL measure as a measure of service quality. The measure splits overall service into five areas/components: Tangibles, Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance, and Empathy. The study assessed the services of PRA through its most important clientele, the Special Resident Retiree’s Visa SRRVisa members, through a descriptive research design by way of survey questions. The majority of the retiree-members surveyed were Americans and males, most of whom belong to the senior age group, college graduates, married, and are officially retired from employment. The study’s results showed that PRA’s edge is the reliability component and that the agency falls short of the empathy component. Each major finding had a corresponding recommendation from the proponent of the study.