Article 1 of the Saudi Benefit Exchange Law

This article is the key to understanding the Benefit Exchange Law, because it explains the terms that recur in the rest of its articles. The most important of these terms are:

• Participant: anyone who has service subject to the Civil Retirement Law, the Military Retirement Law or the Social Insurance Law.
• Participation period: the period counted under one of these laws.
• Award: a lump sum paid once to the participant for his participation period if it does not qualify him for a pension under the system in which he spent it.
• The first system: the system to which the participant was subject before moving to work subject to the last system.
• The last system: the system to whose work the participant moved and under which his service ended.
• The two systems: the retirement system (civil or military) and the social insurance system.
• The competent body: the General Organization for Retirement or the General Organization for Social Insurance, as the case may be.
• Aggregation of periods: the option given to the participant to add his earlier participation period in the first system.
• The specified date: the date this law takes effect.
• The transferred value: the value determined under Article 4.
• The actuarial value: the present value of the amounts deferred for the participant, calculated according to the actuarial tables.

The practical idea is that someone who worked for a period in the government sector (retirement system) and then moved to the private sector (social insurance), or the reverse, has a "first system" and a "last system", and under Article 2 may ask to add his earlier period to his last system. The definitions apply unless the context requires otherwise.