Citizens and residents could have an easier way to navigate their retirement pension entitlements, social insurance contributions and disbursements, as well as end-of-service benefits, if a proposed artificial intelligence-powered chatbot is implemented.
The Social Insurance Organiation (SIO) has put out a tender for a chatbot to streamline user enquiries and provide answers regarding benefit eligibility in an easy-to-use conversational interface.
“This tender aims to engage a qualified and experienced vendor for the supply, implementation, and operation of an AI-powered chatbot solution for the SIO, as part of its digital transformation initiatives and efforts to enhance service delivery,” the SIO noted in Tender No 3/2026/SIO (07-2026).
“The scope includes the provision of a comprehensive multilingual chatbot capable of handling external user enquiries related to SIO services, regulations and procedures, while guiding users through service journeys and improving overall accessibility and customer experience.”
The core functionalities of the system will include a multilingual ability to understand and respond accurately to user queries related to SIO services, laws, regulations, policies and procedures.
This will include providing guidance on benefit calculations and estimations based on applicable rules and user‑provided inputs.
The chatbot is also required to have text‑to‑speech and speech‑to‑text support for all supported languages, with full support for Arabic and English as well as support for common expatriate languages such as Hindi, Urdu, Malayalam, Tamil, Bengali and Tagalog.
According to the mandatory requirements, the chatbot will be primarily web-based with the capability for deployment across WhatsApp and other digital platforms as required.
It should also have a mechanism to seamlessly transfer complex queries to human agents.
On the back end, the tender requires a dashboard that authorised SIO staff can use to manage, update and expand knowledge content without vendor dependency.
All user interactions will also be securely logged for audit, analytics, quality assurance and continuous improvement, with a built-in dashboard for authorised SIO users to view, filter, analyse and export conversation logs, usage statistics and performance metrics.
The solution is expected to integrate with existing systems, provide knowledge management capabilities, and offer analytics and reporting tools to monitor performance and user interactions.
The closing date for the tender is August 18.
The SIO manages social insurance, retirement pensions and protection programmes for public and private sector workers.
It handles monthly contributions, disburses retirement, disability, and death benefits, manages unemployment insurance, and oversees work injury and non-Bahraini end-of-service gratuities.
In addition to administering retirement funds and pension payouts, it provides insurance coverage against old age, disability, death and work-related accidents.
According to recently released open-source data, the SIO paid out more than BD740.7 million to pensioners and beneficiaries last year, including BD319.8m in the private sector and BD420.9m in the public sector.
naman@gdnmedia.bh
&uuid=(email))